Comment A lot of people here are missing the point... (Score 4, Interesting) 592
(I'm not an Apple fanboy, I think. Of the 8 computers in my house, only two are Apple hardware, and one of them is > 5 years old.) The rest are either Acer or System76.
A lot of people buy Apple hardware because it's a known quality and (relatively) easy to get fixed. You (probably) know you're going to pay a little extra, but you know the build quality is generally consistently good and if there are hardware issues you can take it into an Apple Store and get it fixed fairly quickly.
It's fine for people that buy PC hardware all the time to say that a particular brand or model is good price and excellent quality. Most people don't want to do that much research for a laptop or desktop. And many have burnt themselves with buying something expensive and had it go bad in a couple years or need to be troubleshooted over the phone or mailed back due to some obscure issue. Better to drag it to the local Apple Store for many.