PC vendors are mostly selling a commodity product, competing on price, so the margins are slim. Apple is selling an image, which reduces the price competition, and increases the margins. They also only target the top of the market; a lot of the PC volume comes in at the very bottom end, which Apple doesn't even touch: you can't get a mac for less than $600, and they don't ship anything with less than an i5, skipping three tiers of Intel processors.
They are not selling an image, but one of the few laptops that doesn't completely suck. If I could buy a 13" PC with a 2X screen and a trackpad that worked for $1200...that would last...I would totally be all over it.
So Apple is completely gone from the <$1000 tier (let alone < $600), and their laptops are generally acknowledged as the best. And here I am personally with a more expensive X1 Touch Carbon that is actually much less (touch, but low res screen + a trackpad that doesn't work).
