This is true, retail Thinkpads are targeted at businesses so they’re priced fairly high. I’m sure many companies negotiate lower rates.
Most of the reason you see these laptops so widely recommended is the secondhand market. Once those businesses buy new machines, the used market gets flooded with the old ones. This, combined with the repairability and upgradability of many models makes them pretty competitive machines if you shop for a used one that isn’t the latest model. Macs hold value better, which means used models are comparatively quite expensive.
I’ll second your experience though. I’ve used many machines, including daily driving both a Mac and Thinkpad currently for work, and find I prefer the Thinkpad. It has excellent Linux support (even fingerprint reader works on latest Ubuntu) and an excellent keyboard. The trackpad isn’t as good, but I prefer the nipple mouse.
I'm fine with the trackpad. It might not seem as high quality (feels a bit floppy somehow), but the click sensitivity is fairly consistent and it feels comfortable to me. Some other laptops I've used e.g. for work have had trackpads where clicking required too much force to feel comfortable, or the force required felt inconsistent. I prefer this one over those.
Some older ThinkPad model I used at a previous job had a horrendous trackpad, though.
I picked the ThinkPad for personal use largely because of Linux compatibility, too. MacOS might be fine, but if you end up not wanting to use that, going back over to Linux might require way more effort than I was willing to put up with, even if the hardware itself would probably have been a fine choice.
I’ll second your experience though. I’ve used many machines, including daily driving both a Mac and Thinkpad currently for work, and find I prefer the Thinkpad. It has excellent Linux support (even fingerprint reader works on latest Ubuntu) and an excellent keyboard. The trackpad isn’t as good, but I prefer the nipple mouse.