The history of Apple Computers Inc. stretches back to April of 1976. In those early decades, Apple was truly pushing forward the computer, adding color screens, among other features to the then modern computer. Apple has always prided themselves on a high standard of build quality, as well as a devotion to form over function, producing aesthetically pleasing machines for many decades. This design philosophy has led them to some rather awkward moments surrounding some of their products in recent times, however.
Last year, Intel released their eighth generation of the Core series of chips, Coffe Lake. With it came new processors with more cores and higher clock speeds focused especially towards content creators such as video and photo editors and designers. To compete with the recently released AMD Ryzen Threadripper platform, Intel also released a new processor, the Core i9. With even more power than the previous consumer flagship, the i7, the i9 was an expensive but highly competitive CPU. Apple has always associated their brand with artists, and content creators and jumped at the opportunity to place core i9 chips in their latest MacBook Pro. While on paper this seems like an excellent idea, the moment that these new MacBook Pros were sent out for review, Apple quickly regretted their decision. The i9 is an immensely powerful chip for a consumer grade workstation. It has a high power consumption and produces a large amount of heat when under load. Apple, however, did not improve their thermal management system from the i7 variant of the MacBook Pro. The result was that the Core i9 variant when presented with anything more than sitting idly at the desktop thermal throttled. Thermal throttling is something that CPUs do to prevent permanent damage to the chip or computer from excessive heat. In the case of the i9, this was set to around 100 degrees Celsius. The end result was that in most of the use cases which the MacBook Pro was advertised for, the i7 model outperformed the i9 model despite costing significantly more.
This was eventually partially corrected. A firmware update to the i9 variant caused the fans to max out earlier, but the MacBook Pro is still beaten in benchmark tests by other computers with i9 processors and identical specifications. The difference is that other computer manufacturers sacrificed something Apple refused to. Their products are not as thin, they are not as appealing to look at, the DELL which I am typing this on is more at home in the Brickyard than it is in an art gallery. At the end of the day, this is how Apple sells their products. They are not more powerful, they are often using slightly outdated processors or thermal throttling, but they do appear sleek and futuristic. Given their prevalence on campus, I suppose that for many this justifies their price tag.