I had the same thoughts a few weeks ago—I needed to buy a new notebook and coming from many years on several Macbook Pros, I was disappointed that Apple hasn't done any significant refreshes for years. So, I decided just to get a nice Thinkpad and put Ubuntu or Windows on it. This journey—and it was a journey taking weeks—was infuriating and I realized that Apple is still way ahead, even with three years old hardware.
To make it short: I faced so many frustrations on the other side just to buy a non-Apple notebook. I lost so much time with find the right notebook that I finally decided for a three year old Macbook Pro maxed out with a Intel quad core HQ CPU—which runs circles around all current notebooks, performance-wise and battery-wise, even the just launched Kaby Lake U series.
Here just a few of these disappointments which brought me back to a 'coasting platform' as the author says: even the best trackpads in the non-Apple-world are still crap, Thinkpad suffer from display lottery (two suppliers two qualities), displays not matching Apple quality and brightness, PWM for brightness control, hidpi screens are still not fully supported by the OS as on macOS, on Windows it's ok, on Ubuntu so-so, but never the consistent crispiness of macOS, good non-Apple-hardware is not cheaper, Thinkpads can get really, really expensive, too much choice with little difference, worse quality control, battery-time never matches Apple's, very often tacky designs (except Thinkpads), innovation takes wrong direction (who needs 2-in-1s), 5K display support (Windows is kind of capable, Linux not), wake-up problems (notebooks don't come back from sleep and if something is not working, trackpad, Wifi, etc.)...
It's often very small stuff but my notebook is my daily driver and it's shocking that a three year old MBP still crushes all brand new notebooks from competitors.