There are plenty of 1000$+ laptops you can purchase these days with good specs that compete with Apple’s lineup of MacBooks.
Not if you care about a good trackpad.
Definitely not if you care about running *nix with full vendor support.
I was pretty happy with my surface, while it lasted anyway. Ended up with a defective touch screen that couldn't be replaced, so I just got a full refund (thank you extended warranty).
That being said, the touchpad on it is just barely "ok"-level and the webcam (on my older model) is just awful. The friction on the touchpad is so high my wrist becomes sore, and the webcam is located on the bottom of the screen (with a microphone on the bottom front edge near the trackpad!). Even though these flaws have required me to switch to a wireless mouse and external webcam, I'm still pretty satisfied.
For my next laptop, I'll likely either buy the newest XPS model (the newer ones have webcams at a usable position), or try the Razor again (the one I previously tried had quite a small battery life).
(I would love to know the series of events that led a high-end laptop to have a webcam placed at a position that is only optimal for looking up one's nose.)
edit: sorry, I just remembered -- I did have to replace the SSD on this thing when it conked out in 2019! fortunately I bought it refurbished with a warranty of some sort and they shipped a new one fast.
I think it wins on port options, the aesthetics you could argue as personal preferences, and optioned up it has the potential for maybe a better screen and a digitizer but at that point it loses badly on price. It's not a bad computer, but it's clearly a compromise on several issues and not really beating Apple enough at the stuff it does better that would compel a switch from purely a hardware or value standpoint. I think it's fine if you wanted to avoid Apple or macOS for software reasons, but that's about it. I've also had a pretty good track record with Apple hardware lasting ages while I watch peers with PCs that drop like flies every few years.
This is the point that many of us feel stuck with Apple. Every time I research Apple's alternatives I feel like I've wasted my time.
FWIW, I believe they've fixed this in recent revisions, as well as added a 16:10 ratio screen.
This is one of the very few laptops I'd consider vs a macbook at this point, especially given the preinstalled linux option.
For what it's worth, it's the touchpads and displays that keep pushing me away from the 13-inch MBP. I much prefer the feel of most PC precision touchpads to the grainy texture of the MBP touchpad. As for the display, I like to set high-DPI displays to 2x scaling, since it tends to look and work better, but the 13-inch MBP's 2560x1600px only has 1280x800dp of real estate at 2x scaling, which feels very cramped in comparison to the 1920x1080dp of real estate on my XPS 13's 3840x2160px display.
We used XPS 13s as lab computers at a previous job and they would just stop powering on eventually. Sometimes removing and reinserting the battery would bring them back, usually not.
The only real compromise that I've noticed is that the battery life isn't as good. But part of the reason for that is that it has an actual graphics card (albeit not a great one). So it's more of a trade-off than a compromise, the ability to do light gaming is worth it for me.
Although I don't think Macs between 2014 - 2019 are as well built (have had a string of issues with those), I haven't had any other PC/Macbook last as long as that 2012 MBP. Some of my old Thinkpads still work, but have coil whine, noisy fans etc.