I wonder if there's some weird cultural selection bias; like the kind of person who purchases an Apple product is more likely to make a meme about it vs someone who purchases a Dell?
Could be a lack of clarity on my part. Make it into a meme might be more accurate?
I'm not just imagining people making image macros, but more likely to talk about or gossip about it, more likely to ask other people for help or opinions, more likely to pick up on the trend and write about it in some blog or article or go on YouTube about it?
I just imagine a Dell laptop to be majority provided/owned by a company and so such complaints end up going to IT support who ends up swapping it out or something. Whereas a Mac is more likely to be owned by creative professionals, or journalists, or people more generally inclined towards sharing memes in a contagious way or otherwise striking a chord in the cultural zeitgeist?
Most of the reports that stick in my mind (and including my own personal experience) are from people who haven't only ever used just one or the other but have experience with both and are able to do in-kind comparisons between the two experiences. My Toshiba Tecra, Dell XPS 15 and Thinkpad T41, T43, X201, and X1 Carbon power cables could be used to haul trailers (figuratively) without fraying. Apple is the only laptop vendor I know of that uses an extremely fragile soft rubber sheath on their cables and no real strain relief.
So, no, I don't think that's it. Plenty of other laptops have problems, but only Apple has this particular problem.
Do the same for Dell, and one picture out of the first page features a broken cable.
The idea that apple charging cables break is something lots of people discuss, there are dozens of news stories about it too.