What is apparent that since apple changed its name to apple inc, it has not been as interested in making cutting edge computers as it was say 4 years ago.

The company seems preoccupied with its Iphone and Ipod, the development curve for Apple Computers is flat, yes they have the best OS still, yes the products are designed beautifully, and yes they are too expensive, but we didn’t mind paying a lot when we knew we had the best machine money could buy.

Point 1.
Apple laptops are still using Core 2 duo chips, where as dell have a quad core on sale.

Point 2. Apple Are still using Quad Core in their MacPros, when Dell has i7 chips in their XPS systems.

Dell used to lag behind Apple in all aspects, but now its apple that are way behind.

I can’t see Steve doing a Photoshop bake off with a MacPro and a Dell XPS machine now.

I have been an Apple user for 17yrs and the only reason I still am is the OS, Please Apple get your act together or many of us faithful will not be able to keep the faith any longer.

Avalon

There’s no doubting that Apple’s hardware could do with a speed and specs bump. But cycles are cycles.

Right now, for instance, there is an army of Canon users who are wondering why they haven’t given their allegiance to NIkon, because Nikon’s hardware is (arguably) leading the pack at the moment. You could probably draw a comparison in F1 racing. And the restaurant trade. All sorts of industries.

Right now, Apple users feel a little left behind, hardware-wise. It will turn full-circle. A little patience, please.

I disagree about the specs, actually.  Apple is now closer to pure hardware speed parity than ever before now that it can access the same arsenal of CPUs as the rest of the competition—it even gets special runs of chips every now and then (such as for the current 3.06GHz iMac). 

About Point 1, it’s true that quad-core laptop chips have been around for a while.  But it’s still not clear if most laptop buyers want or need 4-core performance.  Unless the OS or particular app is massively parallelized, having a slower-clocked quad-core CPU may not help speed anything up at all.  The faster quad-core laptop chips tend to be quite expensive—also, quad-core chips run hotter and require more power.  Apple’s hardware choices are dictated in large part by its commitment (obsession?) to make the thinnest and lightest notebooks possible. 

About Point 2, that’s because the Mac Pro is no longer intended to be like a Power Mac—instead, it’s a full-on workstation Mac, complete with workstation-y things like ECC RAM.  Core i7 is a desktop-spec chip, not a workstation-spec chip, and it doesn’t support ECC RAM from a quick Google search.  Of course you do have a very valid point in that Apple could use the Core i7 in a powerful desktop tower-type computer, but for one reason or another Apple doesn’t play in that market space.

Apple actually used to lag behind Dell in many respects when Intel/AMD really started ramping up the CPU speed and Motorola just stopped caring, until a precious few moments in the sun with the G5 architecture. 

But I totally agree that many of Apple’s current products don’t fit the bill value-wise with the competition.  The iMac is in need of a good refresh, the Mac Pro hasn’t been updated in a while and the Mac mini has pitiful specs given what’s available now.  But Apple’s bread and butter—the laptops—are pretty up-to-date in terms of raw specs (the GeForce 9400M integrated graphics help), though given the new aluminum designs, Apple being Apple, etc., prices are a little high for what you get.