The thing geeks don't realize is that Apple doesn't
sell "hardware" - they sell an appliance. This year's GE dishwasher won't get cheaper as the year goes on - it'll just get replaced by a newer model at some point. Similarly, a Toyota Prius won't get cheaper as the year wears on, it'll also just get replaced by a new model, at the same price (with the requisite temporary discount to clear old stock).
And the other thing that geeks don't realize: this is also how most of the world thinks, and how they want their products to be.
Also re: "miserably outdated" - this, again, only applies to us geeks. For us it's disappointing to not get the latest, shiniest chipset, or this year's "it" mobile GPU. But here's the rub: the year-over-year performance increase for a laptop in the same model line is, what, 15%? A March 2010 MacBook Pro will surf the internet, access email, and hell, play games just as well as a May 2010 MacBook Pro. They are, for 99% of users, identical unless you put it under benchmark conditions.
We geeks place way too much importance in hardware when thinking about the market in general. We have to remember that nobody else cares.