Right, so when spend twice as much you wind up with a better device. I think this might be only tangentially related to the fact that it was an Apple product, rather, you weren't purchasing the cheapest available device.
Ten years ago Apple was by far the highest quality laptop manufacturer. There was essentially no other option back in the early 2010s. Even now laptops with a "retina" display are not always easy to find for other manufacturers. In retrospect, that was probably the killer feature which induced me to switch.