To clarify, people then and now have in common trying to run the software they prefer on the hardware they prefer. There's no objective "best"; it depends on what you need.
For the vast majority of customers' utility functions, Apple has the best hardware (both in absolute and per dollar terms) on the market right now. It's not "objectively best", but it certainly meets the most stringent definition of "best" that's still useful in conversation.
Not really, price is still extremely important and doesn't really factor into the definition of the best product. Taken to the extreme, Imagine a laptop a thousand times faster then the best there is now, with an extremely bright HDR screen with perfect blacks and a 1000hz refresh rate. It has a battery life of years, It's made of an unscratchable metal alloy and is fanless. It runs windows, linux and macos flawlessly. It's CPU can natively executable all major instruction sets. It's extremely light. Yet it costs 50 million USD. Sure there will be some super rich who may buy it. But never will the majority of the world use it.
>price is still extremely important and doesn't really factor into the definition of the best
Heh. Who says it doesn't?
>Taken to the extreme, Imagine [...]
Okay. Likewise, imagine a computer exactly like you've described, except it costs five cents and measures a cubic kilometer. Sure, there may be a couple people for whom operating such a gigantic machine is no problem, but the vast majority of the world will never use it. So the size of the computer also doesn't factor into whether it's "the best", right? And so on for any single property you care to name.
Yeah, no. The price is as much a part of a product as its physical shape. If Macs cost about the same as non-Macs, maybe they'd the most popular computers in the world, but they're not. And even in that case, they would not be the best. If, say, the program I need to run doesn't run on a Mac, the best computer for me would not be a Mac, it would be whatever computer is able to run it.
Well, it’s not a formal definition, of course. But most review sites that compare products typically distinguish between best overall and best value categories. For example, if I asked gamers what the best GPU is, most would say the NVIDIA RTX 5090. Its price-to-performance ratio is terrible, but it still holds the crown.
> Okay. Likewise, imagine a computer exactly like you've described, except it costs five cents and measures a cubic kilometer. Sure, there may be a couple people for whom operating such a gigantic machine is no problem, but the vast majority of the world will never use it. So the size of the computer also doesn't factor into whether it's "the best", right? And so on for any single property you care to name.
I’m not describing a computer in general. I’m describing a laptop. What you’ve described wouldn’t even qualify for that category. And even if it did, size and weight are core quality factors for laptops. Portability is part of what defines the category.
> Yeah, no. The price is as much a part of a product as its physical shape. If Macs cost about the same as non-Macs, maybe they'd the most popular computers in the world, but they're not. And even in that case, they would not be the best. If, say, the program I need to run doesn't run on a Mac, the best computer for me would not be a Mac, it would be whatever computer is able to run it.
Price isn’t an property of a product itself, it's part of the product offering. If you have a laptop sitting on a table and you start using it, there’s nothing in the experience that tells you what it costs. If you can’t determine something by using the product, it isn’t an inherent attribute of it. Your cubic kilometer example also falls completely flat here, you can notice it when using the product.
So I'd agree with your point if we would be talking about the product offering. That includes things like pricing, warranty structure, on-site support, marketing message, availability etc.
The best laptop doesn’t have to match everyone’s personal needs. Your criteria may differ, but there are still objective qualities that most people agree are important in a laptop, build quality, display, battery life, input feel, and so on. In those respects, MacBooks tend to push these qualities to an extreme degree, more than any other laptop.
>For example, if I asked gamers what the best GPU is, most would say the NVIDIA RTX 5090. Its price-to-performance ratio is terrible, but it still holds the crown.
Not for me. My 3090 can already max out my UPS. Being gifted a 5090 would be a terrible inconvenience for me. What you mean is that it's the fastest gaming GPU. Is that what "best" means? Something is the best in its product category if it tops the chart on the primary property of that category that applies to some abstract consumer? An abstract gamer with no other constraints would just want the fastest GPU, so the fastest one is the best? Fine. But then I'm forced to ask, where do categories begin and end? The 5090 is the best gaming GPU, but it's not the best GPU. Macs may be the best laptops (I don't know, but I'll grant it), but they're not the best PCs, or the best gaming laptops. Or, if I'm feeling cheeky, not the best laptops for under $(price of a Mac - 100).
>If you have a laptop sitting on a table and you start using it, there’s nothing in the experience that tells you what it costs.
I didn't realize arguing like this was possible. So if the laptop instead of being borrowed was yours, but if you ever type and send an email with "テスト" on the subject and body it would explode, but you never send that email (because you don't speak Japanese), that's a perfectly fine laptop, right? I mean, it's the same thing; in one instance the price is irrelevant to you (because you didn't pay it), and in the other the little lithium bomb is irrelevant to you (because you can't ever set it off). So they're both equally good products, at least subjectively.
>build quality, display, battery life, input feel, and so on
Those are the way they are not in small part because of how much they cost. Do you think Dell wouldn't rather make make much higher quality laptops for the same cost and the same price? Yes, you can get a feel for the price of something by using it. Haven't you ever heard someone say "ugh, this feels so cheap"? It's a vague feeling that's difficult to attribute, but it is informed by real experience. Inexpensive products often "feel cheap" and bad to use, while more expensive products don't, or to a lesser degree.