That's exactly what I'm disappointed with on everything new. The Thinkpad T60p, from 2006 remains superior on both points to everything new from my point of view.
While a very fine machine in it's day, the screen, battery life, processing power, disk speed, size, and lack of heat on a modern machine like the 13" Retina MacBook Pro are on another level. You're talking about 7 years of evolution.
I've used a 15" Retina Macbook Pro. The screen is not better. Sure, it's higher density and brighter, but the viewing angles are not better. Subjectively, I'd say the color reproduction is worse (I used them next to each other). Reflections, glare and fingerprints are significantly worse on the MBP.
I have a one year old MBP that I haven't used much; I'm not sure why, but the screens seem the same?
I do know one thing about most old laptops; they were made to last longer than 2 years.
That said--HP--as made crappy laptops for quite some time. I bought one a few years ago and it was horrid on an engineering basis, but it looked Slick.
Getting back to the original story, I don't think I've bought a desktop since 2003. I prefer using them, but laptops are just so convenient.
They've done some deep level fixes which just makes everything flow and stick together as one "netbook" user-experience in a much better way.
My experience is mostly from Asus Tarnsformer type devices and not regular X86 laptop hardware, but I suspect the same improvements should be valid in X86 country. You certainly have nothing to lose by trying it [1].
My 2 cents.
In spite of the problems, it's amazingly fast and usable, esp. compared to Windows/Ubuntu.
running the stable android-x86 on a Samsung NB505
How hard can it be to design keyboards with all keys in the correct place? Thinkpads used to be the only ones which got this design issue right.
The problem with that is Thinkpads were never meant for mainstream consumers, Lenovo isn't going to out-Apple Apple, and if it wanted to try, it would do better using a model line that doesn't have a business-oriented reputation going back decades.
Don't get me started on the single audio socket for both recording and playback.