Speaking of form-over-function, when I was looking for a laptop in 2010 or so, I noticed that Mac laptops weren't available with quad-cores. I wondered why, and figured out that it was because Apple didn't want to make their laptops a little bit thicker so that there would be room for a proper socket (back then, the i7 QMs were only available in socketed form).
Apple tends to focus on things that provide the most tangible improvement to the average user. Namely huge screen resolutions and good SSDs. Apart from that, the notion that Macs have good specs is somewhat of a myth.
Speaking of hot Apple products, Time Capsules had the same problem, where the power supply would fail, probably due to overheating. So now I have mine modified to run off a 4-pin molex so I can power it externally. Not that it's an Apple-specific thing, my thinkpad has awful thermal design too (one fan with terrible intake trying to cool a quad core and a quadro).