Apple has no need to compete with that. Cheap laptops are wintel domain.... always have been.
The question is, what is “premium” really worth? A $2000 laptop is a serious amount of cash these days, but high end professional Wintel Machines with similar specs come in at similar price points to Macbook pros.
Mac has never played in the low end, its not their market.
I’d want to see a comparison of the professional laptop market not the overall market, before I would concede that Mac’s are doing worse than their competition. Their competition isn’t the plastic acer laptop on the shelf at WalMart or Best Buy. THeir competition are things like the top of the line Thinkpad Pro etc.
That was not my point
My point was the hardware you are getting with a Mac is no different then the hardware you were getting with a Dell
They all use the same basic components and parts all made by the same OEMs
Apple does not make Hard Drives, Seagate, Toshiba, Western Digital, Hitachi do
Apple does not make memory, Crucial, Micron, Hynix, Epilda do
Apple does not make the CPUs, Intel, AMD, IBM, HP, Motorola do
etc