You are lopping "consumers" in a single basket where they are all supposed to want the exact things Apple focuses on, and even on these aspects Apple isn't guaranteed to be the top choice.
> If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people would be singing their praise for years.
If Apple was really hitting perfectly all the important aspects, they would have 90% market share on the PC market. For the record they're at about 15%.
On the bias coming from sticking around nerd circles, yes "normal" customers don't long for shoving 128Gb of RAM in their space heater PC. But they're also not raving about how good the trackpad is, or how the display is such a technical marvel.
You'll see people walking from meeting to meeting with their mouse because they just don't use trackpads (though they might touch their screen if/when it's supported), others spending their days with earbuds in ear because it dual connections to the laptop audio and they never hear the speakers in the whole device's life. Some dock their macbook all day and hook it to a FHD monitor. Everyone will care about different things.
That's the part for me where the Apple laptop line is so uniform, you need to fall pretty near the middle of the target to properly get the benefits.
> Apple is ahead
They are ahead regarding the exact balance they are targeting. But you'll get better perfs if you're willing to go full desktop for instance and don't care about the size and power consumption (the mac pro going the way of the DoDo doesn't help). You'll get more/cheaper memory if you don't care about a unified architecture. Apple's GPU isn't the market leader. You also won't get anything smaller or lighter than the macbook Air. And of course no USB-A on laptops, which surprisingly still stings.
It's obvious but merits to be said: Apple targets a very specific consumer, and won't be optimal for everyone, including people who want more than what Apple offers.
> manufacturers seem to not be able to understand how to deliver quality in their products.
This is more a matter of taster I'd argue, what people see as "quality" will vary. I'm still amazed by people praising the glass backs and metal on the iPhones for instance. An eink laptop will probably be the same deal, going the pragmatic way (mostly plastic/composite) or the Apple way (glass and aluminium)