I recently bought my first MacBook and was wondering exactly the same thing.

How can all of the other manufacturers miss the point to this extent?

Simple branding. Simple model distinction. "15 inch". Elegance. High quality. Visual appeal. No wonder Apple has been so successful... everyone else is so poor, and so caught up in the middle of the pack. Sony is the only other company offering laptops to appeal to the high-end and theirs are kind of a joke.