That's because that's all Apple ever do. They charge you a fortune for 2 year old technology because all of their new products are behind the times the day they come out. Was never like that under Jobs.
It's unfortunate that Apple have become a company simply geared at gouging as much money as they can from customers while providing subpar products in return. The money you'd spend on this MacBook Pro would get you an incredible machine for anything you'd need to do professionally. The only reason to buy one of these would be for the Apple logo on the front.
You know, I have never found any Apple product to be subpar.
I've always been pleased with the premium feel. The quality of the materials. The fit, finish and design.
I also don't think you can fairly compare specs between the Mac and a PC. A PC is running Windows, which basically has to be compatible with a million different configurations of possible hardware. As such it HAS to run insanely fast to get anything done, given the inefficient code used to cover so many hardware configurations.
Conversely, since Apple make the OS and the hardware options, it's far easier for them to keep the code more efficient. So you can achieve more with less brute horse power.
300 horse power in a small sedan would be quite quick, put that in a Range Rover, and it might feel a bit sluggish.
I rarely find myself being too annoyed with the speed of my old MacBook Pro, now the new one has a quad core processor, faster memory and HD, more RAM, I'm thinking it will be fine.
I'm okay with a sensible balance between crazy powerful hardware, and reasonable battery life.
I would however argue that sometimes Apple is so obsessed with thin, that I'd almost rather have a fatter machine if they could fit more battery capacity in it.