Being a Consumer vs Investor

There’s some lesson to be learned here about investing vs consuming but I can’t quite figure it out! Hmm, I wonder if I’m a consumer or an investor.
If instead of spending $5700 on an Apple Powerbook in 1997 you’d bought Apple stock, it’d be worth $330K! If I hadn’t bought a MacBook Pro in 2008 for ~$2,499 but bought Apple Stock it’d now be worth $5,680. I’d have nearly $8,000 more.