At some point, you're paying a few hundred extra for the aluminum body and glowy Apple logo - it's not just about "premium" versus "consumer" tiers of hardware.
A Latitude 5400 (again, same hardware loadout) prices on Dell's website right now at $849.00. A ThinkPad Edge 13", again, similar loadout, prices at $694.00.
Apple makes fantastic hardware, no doubt, but it's very difficult to consider them to be competitively priced. For the price I'd pay for a MBP, I can get a machine a generation ahead in terms of raw horsepower. I just got an HP Envy 17 (I wanted a portable workstation, rather than a ultralight) and it's a hell of a lot of hardware (Core i7, 8GB RAM, 750GB 7200 RPM HDD) for roughly half the price of an equivalent MBP.
You're generally paying a few hundred extra for the aluminum body, the shiny Apple logo, the comparatively huge multitouch trackpad, firewire, bluetooth, backlit keyboard paired with an ambient light sensor, a brighter, higher-contrast display, and a longer-lasting battery (though a lot of that is due to software). Often times (including when comparing against the ThinkPad Edge) you're also upgrading from a toy Intel GPU to an NVidia GPU.
Let me tell you a story about my 17" unibody MacBook Pro. It's nearly 2 years old now. I used this thing constantly, I use it about 12 hours a day, every day, and carry it around in my backpack every single day. Most weekends, too, even.
Thanks to the glass screen, the screen as as good as it was on day one - and it's the best I've ever had in terms of brightness and clarity. When the screen gets dirty, I scrub it furiously with a napkin. Glass - it doesn't scratch! The alu body is as tight as on day 1. You'd have to look very closely to see any scratches at all - it basically looks brand new.
The battery lasted until 2 days ago, providing around 6 hours real life usage (on a 17" laptop!). Now it's down to 60% capacity at 500 charge cycles - and guess what, Apple is replacing it free under AppleCare warranty.
Nothing shakes. Nothing rattles. The unibody is just as solid as it was new. As is the keyboard and the track pad.
It's blazingly fast too thanks to an SSD I put in the optical drive spot (though that was a little harder than it should have been).
At the end of the day, this is just fantastic quality and it ends up being not only better but also cheaper than any crap quality laptop simply because I can use it for 2 years. Maybe even longer, who knows?
I wouldn't compare the Dell 5400 and a Mac in terms of quality. We have a pile of dells latitudes that after less than 2 years are effectively paper weights. It's a combination of low quality components and poor Dell software. We are in the middle of replacing them all with Macs. And the users couldn't be happier. Even with a lower power CPU, the Macs are noticeably faster.
A Latitude 5400 (again, same hardware loadout) prices on Dell's website right now at $849.00. A ThinkPad Edge 13", again, similar loadout, prices at $694.00.
Apple makes fantastic hardware, no doubt, but it's very difficult to consider them to be competitively priced. For the price I'd pay for a MBP, I can get a machine a generation ahead in terms of raw horsepower. I just got an HP Envy 17 (I wanted a portable workstation, rather than a ultralight) and it's a hell of a lot of hardware (Core i7, 8GB RAM, 750GB 7200 RPM HDD) for roughly half the price of an equivalent MBP.