I think one factor is that other companies (rightfully or not) think they have to offer a range of products that uses lots of different hardware.
Looking for a laptop at dell.com, for example, they seem to offer a choice of 7 different CPUs in 5 product lines (Latitude, Inspiron, Dell Pro, Dell Plus, Dell Pro Plus) with at least 3 different graphics cards (Intel Iris Xe, Intel Arc, and HawkPoint - UMA. I also spot a generic “Intel” that may indicate a fourth one)
Their desktops use different hardware, again, with, for example, Intel® UHD Graphics or Nvidia cards.
To me, that suggests they internally somewhat act as multiple smaller companies with smaller budgets to tune products.
Also, if they ask one of their suppliers about a performance issue, chances are the answer is “get out newest product”, not “let’s help you fix that”.
Apple doesn’t have that problem anymore for most of their hardware.
I HATE this. I regularly look at really high end products I'll never buy for the fun of it in a "What's the best X that money can buy?" sort of way. And it took me half an hour to find what's the "best" Lenovo laptop money-no-object . Not even ChatGPT could figure it out easily (as far as I can tell it's the P16s). Apple? Well they sell 2 laptops: the MacBook Air and Pro. Select the Pro, spec it out to the max, done. Even the 13/16-inch choice is part of the spec process, and not a separate product.
PC manufacturers, please, for the love of all that is holy, make FIVE laptops: the thin, the tablet-laptop, the "pro", the gaming (the "pro" with RGB) and the workstation (as in Xeon/Quadro). Keep the name you give each of them year-after-year-after-year. And just offer me a lot of CONFIGURATION options to each of these, not a lot of different products.
Dell seams quite reasonable by comparison with Lenovo.
Looking for a laptop at dell.com, for example, they seem to offer a choice of 7 different CPUs in 5 product lines (Latitude, Inspiron, Dell Pro, Dell Plus, Dell Pro Plus) with at least 3 different graphics cards (Intel Iris Xe, Intel Arc, and HawkPoint - UMA. I also spot a generic “Intel” that may indicate a fourth one)
Their desktops use different hardware, again, with, for example, Intel® UHD Graphics or Nvidia cards.
To me, that suggests they internally somewhat act as multiple smaller companies with smaller budgets to tune products.
Also, if they ask one of their suppliers about a performance issue, chances are the answer is “get out newest product”, not “let’s help you fix that”.
Apple doesn’t have that problem anymore for most of their hardware.