Apple has never been the high performance brand. They've traditionally either been a generation behind in processors and memory configuration or at least not at

Apple has never been the high performance brand. They've traditionally either been a generation behind in processors and memory configuration or at least not at the bleeding edge. That being said, they tend to run more consistently across a wider breadth of configurations. People were using their classic macs (the 680x0 series) for nearly a decade after they were turned off as a product line.