You're probably right about a couple of things here. First of all, Apple's products are notoriously expensive. I've once got myself a list of hardware in the Ma

You're probably right about a couple of things here. First of all, Apple's products are notoriously expensive. I've once got myself a list of hardware in the Mac Pro and looked up the individual prices of the components. It added up to roughly half of what Apple charges you. For that sort of money you have a huge margin of what you can do to make things quicker. Also, laptops are not performance computers. The idea of a "high-end gamer laptop" makes me shiver and every time somebody asks me which laptop to buy for high-end gaming I'll tell them "a desktop". The thing is though, that a proper laptop is good enough for doing a lot of work-related tasks and definitely good enough for consumer use. People like their laptops because they can carry them around, use them wherever they want. And they know that the price for this mobility is worse performance. Most people don't care though. It's quick enough for most things they do, so there's no reason to care either. Personally I like my laptop, it's got a near-fullsize keyboard, a whopping 18.4" display and I don't care about a mouse at all, so the touchpad doesn't bother me. It's quick enough for everything I do, large enough to be comfortable to work on but still at a size that makes it somewhat portable. Now obviously, if you've got performance computing to do, stay away from laptops. For everything else, they're just fine.