> This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price.
This was also true at times after Apple switched to Intel — for example, around the time Apple went SSD-only they were considerably cheaper _and_ faster than the competition who were either shipping HDDs or using slower low-end SSDs using HDD-optimized interfaces. The main confound has been that they weren't selling crappy but super cheap machines or large laptops, so you could find products in those classes which were faster (at twice the weight / half the battery life) or much cheaper and a lot of people would make comparisons for things which were really in different classes.
The difference now is that we've hit the point where it's easier to do those side-by-side comparisons because everyone is using SSDs, solid case designs with decent thermals, etc. so there isn't an obvious confound like weight or build quality to complicate the comparisons.
This was also true at times after Apple switched to Intel — for example, around the time Apple went SSD-only they were considerably cheaper _and_ faster than the competition who were either shipping HDDs or using slower low-end SSDs using HDD-optimized interfaces. The main confound has been that they weren't selling crappy but super cheap machines or large laptops, so you could find products in those classes which were faster (at twice the weight / half the battery life) or much cheaper and a lot of people would make comparisons for things which were really in different classes.
The difference now is that we've hit the point where it's easier to do those side-by-side comparisons because everyone is using SSDs, solid case designs with decent thermals, etc. so there isn't an obvious confound like weight or build quality to complicate the comparisons.