1. Shitty 1080p TN or barely IPS panels with laughable color accuracy, horribly bad color reproduction, viewing angles that just plain suck, 300 or 250 nits brightness and no 100% coverage of even sRGB.
2. Completely overkill and expensive 4K panels with HDR, touch, OLED, all the bell and whistles that somehow forgot that they are in laptops and drain battery at ridiculous levels.
Apple, on the other hand, have displays that have the perfect pixel density for laptops so their battery drain is manageable, have excellent color space coverage (even the 999$ Air has 100% sRGB) and perfect color accuracy and viewing angles.
Then comes the trackpad and it's not even a contest. On a macbook, I really don't need a mouse unless I am doing something high precision like Illustrator or video editing. Even there the trackpad is workable.
And then something that is more on a personal level, but no one apart from Apple has their high end devices available in India quickly. The new dell XPS might come very close to the macbook, but getting it in India is not possible, even after 4 months after launch. Even if it arrives, it will be one or two base models with limited availability or the completely overkill models. Not so with Apple.
I still think than MacBooks's resolution is the best compromise though
I bought Macs way back in the day - my last one was a 2006 Mac Mini to use as an HTPC. But every time I get ready to buy a computer, Macs don’t seem to have any advantage. I would be installing the same software I use for Windows - Chrome, Visual Studio Code and various language runtimes, Visual Studio (or Rider), a bit torrent client, Plex, etc.
I can buy a Dell a lot cheaper - of course from the MS store to avoid all of the crapware - and have more options.
I still recommend Macs for other people though who have the budget. They are still slightly less of a hassle than Windows and they can go to an Apple Store if they have any issues.
A while ago I installed a pristine Windows 10 (retail) copy on my NUC, just to see where Windows is at. I'll skip the Candy Crash Saga criticism. But I was really surprised that besides the drivers, it also auto-installed some crappy RealTek application and some crappy Intel application (for tweaking GPU settings or whatever). No vendor driver CDs or whatnot. Just letting Windows idle for some time and these applications were installed.
Is it really possible to get a pristine Windows install these days?
My previous Windows laptop had a super annoying constant display flickering, even on a fresh installation.
After months, I learned that I had to disable "auto-resfresh display" (or something similar) that in an Intel app because it was enabled by default (and re-enabled after every major update). Compared to macOS/Gnome, I think that Windows shows poor taste in many aspects
It's excessively expensive though. It's a business expense for me, but otherwise I would've bought one of those laptops that come with Linux pre-installed.
Most likes Linux laptops are in the same pricing ballpark as a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. And they don't have macOS.
For me, the MacBooks still have the best build quality, trackpad, speakers, display resolution (instead of the FHD vs overkill 4K choice) and, more importantly, I just prefer macOS and its approach on laptops. Furthermore, you can still sell a used macbook after years for quite high prices compared to the Windows alternatives. Granted, I'd never buy some of Apple's products/configurations (like an iMac, the Mac Pro or the 16 MBP with 64 GB of RAM), but a base MBP with 16GB of RAM is more than adequate for me nowadays and it's not much more expensive than the alternatives.
If you don't care about the OS (or prefer Windows/linux), then obviously a macbook doesn't make any sense these days
Why are MBs and MBPs used in the tech industry? Many types of dev roles can only be done well on Linux or OSX (or BSD), because they're writing software for servers or their software runs on servers. The company has to choose. Some companies go exclusively Linux for their desktops and OSX for their laptops. Some go exclusively laptop. Linux does have mature enough laptops for consumers, but for business use on the laptop side Linux hasn't gone far enough. I have yet to run into a company that doesn't offer laptops because of remote and partial remote work being so common, along with needing to take your work computer into meeting rooms from time to time.
In short, it depends on the industry you're in, and if you're not in those industries you probably haven't seen it, but what fuels most Macbook sales is businesses.
RAM and docker were very important for our product and whoever chose the MacBook ended up regretting it (devs only, I mean).
Requiring docker from the get go sounds painful, but maybe that just comes from my inexperience never having to use it. Like, does CLion, PyCharm, and similar even support building into docker from the get go? Wouldn't that increase build times instead of just building it natively on your machine? Any extra level of complexity is painful until you automate it in a bug free and efficient way, I suppose.
So, setting aside the price and performance, compare the machines setting those aside. Most other machines feel clunky by comparison. I bought an XPS 15 and had audio driver issues. The fans blow out of the bottom, which seems pretty lame for having a laptop, say, on your lap. It has a lame plastic flexy feel compared to a MacBook. A lot of people mention the XPS line as an alternative to the Macs, but I bought one to leave the Mac ecosystem, and it felt so clunky that I still just went ahead and bought another Mac after that.
So, I really think it makes perfect sense if the price and performance don't much concern you.
On the other hand, even if Kubuntu (my preference) run perfectly on a Macbook, I'd still go for a Thinkpad, because of the keyboard and the touchpad.
I'm less enamored with the rest. My daily driver laptop is a 32G i9 from 2018(?). While I have enough RAM to run a couple docker containers, most of the folks I work with are stuck with the 16G version, which are constantly out of resources and have no upgrade plan. For being a 'pro' spec machine, it does not have the cooling it needs to be pushed like I do.
Aren't most Mac laptops screens glossy though? I don't really care how good the screen is if it acts like a huge mirror all the time.
As for the trackpad, if you are proficient with the keyboard (or use a tiling wm) it does not really matter anymore.
There’s also no way around using the trackpad sometimes. Using i3 and Vim keybindings wherever possible, I still need my trackpad enough that its relatively poor quality is annoying.
I guess it must be subjective, because I find they are horribly glossy. I'm still using an old matte Macbook for this reason.
I have a 2011 MBA whose battery still lasts an hour and it can do all the "daily driver" tasks except gaming.
(Meanwhile I replaced my other laptop's battery 3 times in that time!)
THe MBA's mobo finally went out so I'm in the market for a new laptop NOW and want to justify buying an EIGHTH GEN i5 MBP for over $1000 when there are laptops with TENTH gen i7's and >1tb hdd's for similar money.......
I mainly go back to the batteries I had to buy for one laptop.
But... are we talking about the same XPS laptop? My wife's 13" XPS purchased ~2016 has had horrible reliability. The charging port died a long time ago, fortunately, it charges over USB-C. But now it no longer keeps a charge, won't sleep/hibernate properly (will cook with the lid closed), and more. A friend of mine bought the same one at the same time and his is also breaking down (keyboard problems).
I've tried to get her to switch to Mac, but she prefers Windows, so next time I'm buying her a Surface Laptop. HTH anyone considering the XPS.
Last I tried this was on a 2016 X1 Carbon.
I have a macbook 15 for work and am extremely disappointed in its battery life, so I think the Lenovo matches up well.
I do have tlp running on it.
You might check out your old model here, just to see if there are important tweaks: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki
If HW reliability is a concern and you want to choose Apple, couldn't you BootCamp it or run Windows in a full screen VM?
For various reasons my main OS is Windows, however due to my past life as Linux fanboy during the university, when I decided to buy a travel netbook, Asus were the ones getting my money for a 1215B with Ubuntu pre-installed.
Sure it had a couple of issues later, more due to the way that Canonical managed the transition of the wlan and Brazos drivers, but it served the message to which vendors I wanted to support.
Don't want to use either Windows or hate Apple's behaviours? Then support the OEMs trying to ship Linux on their hardware.
Another thing is Thunderbolt, but IDK if that’s supported under Linux? So that might be a moot point anyhow.
All my years of StarCraft have me a wiz at mouse and keyboard. Plus I doc to 3 screens.
Onthego, I have touch screen which I use surprisingly often.
Ignorance is not helping either side.
Disclosure: I own a lot of Apple products, though I still prefer Ubuntu to MacOS.
And your beliefs about what you presume other people imply should probably stay out of this discussion.
Apple makes kick-ass machines, but I see Macbook Pros everywhere. How many people in the real world need a $2000+ computer? If these people aren't buying it for the logo, what are they buying it for?
Apple has positioned themselves as a lifestyle brand. How can you deny that?
I'm looking at buying a laptop right now and I can either buy an apple MBP ... OR a MONSTER laptop with much better specs for the same-or-less price. I'm hand-wringing over it.
With past laptops I've only been disappointed by the non-Apple laptops I've had. Bad ram, bad battery, bad battery again, bad battery AGAIN, slow-for-hardware-misfiring issues... or the Apple that has been a truly reliable machine for going on nine years.
Trust in Quality.
That's my "denial".
But all that is a shitty landscape, opinions are mine. I meant no offense. But you see how things work out there.
Then work gave me a Mac. Suddenly I had a Linux machine without the headaches. It took me about 6 months to get used to the OS, but by then I loved it and bought one for the house.
I now have a Linux machine at work and am spending my weekend upgrading the operating system because my video card goes insane and it takes me 3 days of fiddling to finally get it working again.
YES, SPEND MY WEEKEND WORKING SO MY VIDEO CARD WILL WORK.
But my Mac has VIM, grep, awk, cron, sed, and find. A real Linux shell, in other words. It also runs most of the Linux apps I want to run.
Also, I know they didn't stealthily give me a cheap-ass battery that's going to need replacing right outside of warranty. I know it'll be fine.
My laptop isn't a status symbol for you to see and adore.
Honestly?
I wish I could hide the fact that I had a Mac so that I wouldn't worry that it'd be stolen at conferences!
...
Anyway. I humbly suggest that you may be the thing you despise: An Apple snob. Just not the kind most people know. Maybe you're the "Granny Smith" type of Apple snobs. ;-)
I've upvoted your comment since we've clearly misunderstood each other. I don't think we're at disparity, the bloke tried to install Ubuntu on a mac after all. It's all good.
The quality on this laptop is amazing. The keyboard works (have a friend who took his new MBP to Apple 3x in the first month due to keyboard issues). The trackpad is amazing (they used to not be so). I'll be on these machines for the coming years (probably ~6-10 based on my history, then back to OSX).
Edit: it was also ~$1000 cheaper for equivalent specs as the MBP.