Battery Out = Performance Hit?

"While I was benchmarking third-party RAM with a MacBook Pro this week, I noticed that the computer was taking a huge hit in performance when it wasn't running on Apple-supplied memory. A minor decrease in performance might be unlikely, but a 37 percent plunge in processing power seemed impossible. After some backtracking, I realized that I had been running the benchmarks without the battery installed after I'd swapped out the stock RAM for third-party memory."

Seeing as Apple has documented this issue, it is apparently known and designed.  That being said, it just seems odd and everyone discussing it right now seems almost completely baffled by it.  The explanation, in theory, makes sense.  They don't want to overdraw power that the power supply can't handle by itself, but if that's the case how come we haven't heard of this same issue with other manufacturers?  I personally think the MacBook is an alien device that we've yet to fully grasp the function of and at some point we'll all be sequestered in a room and debriefed as we're handed new notebooks, but that's me.  What's your theory?