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Start any Mac vs. PC debate and sooner or later someone will bring up how Macs' "highest quality components" make the choice equivalent to "Porsche vs. Camry." Of course, Apple likes to play up this perception, invoking the picture of PCs made sloppily in sweatshops while Macs are put together in sparkling white labs by Apple store employees.
Not only are the laptops you're arguing about both put together in Taiwan, but very likely even by the same company. Taiwan's Quanta Computer makes 33 percent of all laptops in the world, including Dells, HPs, Sonys, Toshibas and yes, Macs.
In fact, if you're reading this on a laptop, there's a 90 percent chance it was manufactured by one of seven giant companies you've never heard of, all located in Taiwan. None of the brands you know and love actually makes computers. Fortunately, Taiwan is a pretty laid back country where almost nothing ever goes wrong.
These are ordinary Taiwan parliamentary sessions. We're not kidding.
America can't even officially recognize Taiwan as a country or China will go ballistic, possibly literally. China claims to own Taiwan, and has only been persuaded not to make a move so far due to strategically timed visits by U.S. aircraft carriers and tricky diplomacy. Every time some Taiwan official gets drunk and says, "Come on, China, we've pretty obviously been independent for decades, let's stop pretending," everything gets rough and we have to send aircraft carriers again until China calms down.
Even if China's cagey enough not to actually attack Taiwan, most of these Taiwan laptop-makers have factories in China, so if these countries even stop speaking to each other for a bit, we'd be out of laptops, and all our big computer companies couldn't do a thing about it except twiddle their thumbs and look embarrassed.
