I know what your point was and I won't disagree with you...during the 90's. The Gil Amelio years were when Apple went down the crapper. They wanted to emulate the PC business model and failed. In that comparison, I completely agree with you. Where I find your comparisons wrong is that unlike HG Apple is a design leader that innovates and their competitors take notice. For example. Popularizing the GUI interface. Xerox PARC was first but Apple commercialized it. The PDA(Newton) which is the precursor to all of todays smart phones, including BB and iPhones. Tablets in 1983. The famous iPods, which while not innovative nor the first mp3 players to market, they distilled it down and made it simple and easy to use instead of being bloated and unintuitive like alot of competitor products.
Apple creates new products. Quality products. HG doesn't. Marked difference.
Oh and if you haven't guessed by now, I'm the Mac lead for my IT department. I'm also the guy that builds standardized Window staff/public images for our laptops/desktops (Dell/Toshiba and HP/IBM) as well as maintain the DHCP servers that talk to them. I like to think I could say I'm a little bit qualified to say when I've come across quality machines.