Yes you get what you pay for.
I always wonder, though, why people compare a $2500 Mac with the $300 PC.
People always say their PC was a piece of crap but now that they own Mac they'll never go back.
LOL, well if you had purchased a $2500 PC, you wouldn't have been buying 3 of them in 5 years either.
Doesn't.make.sense.
This a huge point. I don't loathe apple; in fact, much of their stuff is quite good, and very high quality. That said, I will likely never buy one... I just don't see the value. Yes, the $2500 Mac has better hardware than the $300 PC... such an extreme comparison (as is too often the basis of the argument) is useless. But if you compare the $2000 Mac against a $1200 PC (as an example)... then you've got a much more level comparison.
Out of the box, there are some good arguments to be made for Apple over a Windows PC. Ease of initial setup, and included software are probably two of the biggest things going for Apple. The included iLife suite (e.g. iMovie, iPhoto , GarageBand) is quite a bit better than anything that is included with Windows (Windows live movie maker for instance). Of course, if you're going to be installing Photoshop, Premier, etc, anyway, then this is largely irrelevant.
From my own experience, I recently purchased a refurbished Dell Inspiron 17R Special edition, which compares pretty reasonably against an Apple refurbished 17" MacBook Pro. Both have a near-identical processor, and reasonably comparable graphics capabilities. The Dell has more RAM (8gb vs 4), and double the hard drive space (1TB vs 500gb). The downsides for the Dell are that the battery life is not as good (only 3 hours vs about 6), and the build quality/design isn't quite as sleek. Now, with that said, I only paid $969, as opposed to the $1979 Apple is asking. For me, it was an easy decision.
Back to the original question, I'd say that even within any particular brand, there is a fair bit of variance as to quality. I've noticed this most often with Dell and HP: both have models at the lower end of the spectrum that get mediocre reviews and are just a generally sad build quality, but both also have a lot of very high quality stuff further up the price ladder. Though this is only my observation, of course, generally the models that are marketed towards business usage as opposed to consumer, tend to have somewhat lower specs, a somewhat simpler packaging, slightly higher prices, but far superior build quality. I wouldn't be surprised if the same holds true for a lot of vendors, just that HP and Dell are the ones I've most noticed.
In terms of build quality and sleek design alone, there are many higher-end Samsung models (in the $1000-1400 range) that look absolutely beautiful, and pack decent performance. A lot of Toshiba, Acer, and Gateway models, particularly on the lower end of the price ladder, tend to be exactly the opposite, and suffer from hinges that comes loose after several months, cracking/separation of the case; not things that actually affect the functionality of the product per se, but definitely makes it feel cheap.
Anyway, point is, it all depends a lot on what you want to do, what type of user you are, what exactly you're looking to spend, and so on. But, blanket arguments that Apple products are unquestionably superior are just as out of place as those arguments claiming that Apple simply sucks. Different brands have a lot of different things to offer.
