Apple has consistently shown that it cares more about form over function. No one needs their laptops to be any thinner than they already are. And no one needs the useless, expensive touchbar.
Well, this depends.
Here's how a user put it: "I have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air - even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don't think I'm unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light. (...) A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing (yeah, I’m using the smaller 11″ macbook air, and I think weight could still be improved on, but at least it’s very close to the magical 1kg limit)." - Linus Torvalds
(Later he stopped using Apple laptops for the even lighter/thinner chromebooks).
A 15 inch laptop is never going to be portable or easy to carry. We don't care about thickness. Just make it a bit thicker to add a full-travel keyboard.
(Typing this on a 101-key NMB I restored which, I think, is close to typing nirvana.)
Well, I don't like the new keyboard, but I sure like my laptop thin and lightweight, and I use a 15.
The other type are those looking for a luggable desktop, those who hotdesk but don’t really work on the go.
There’s then who want both, but that has proven to be a mugs game. No matter how much money you throw at it you end up with compromises on portability it power.
I for one stick with a 2015 era desktop and a 2013 11” MacBook air and don’t have problems.
But people will have different expectations / idea of comfort.
It used to be the Pro (PowerBook) was targeted towards Pro users, and the regular MacBook (iBook) was targeted towards consumers. This also nicely aligned with price segmentation, but that was secondary. The focus was on pro vs consumer. Then Apple added the Air, where the focus, as the name implies, was on thinness.
At some point, however, these categories became less of a distinction between the targeted consumer which happened to align with price segmentation, but instead became all about price segmentation itself. I think that’s where the devices went off the rails. The Pro in MacBook now basically just means this is the most expensive machine in the Apple lineup...
All the lines basically have the same priorities now, with the only difference being the manufacturing budget, which determines what features are available.
But that's hardly a justification when alternatives exist and the technology allows it.
I have a useful keyboard, Bluetooth that doesn't randomly die, graphics drivers that don't suck and a MATTE SCREEN. I didn't even realize that you could get a laptop with one anymore--I practically cried tears of joy when I opened it up and didn't see a reflection in the screen.
I'm slowly transitioning off of my 2015 Macbook Pro Retina to Linux on the Lenovo. I've had a few issues, but I can't say that my OS X experience has been all roses either. The OS X machine randomly loses Bluetooth, drops my printer at irregular intervals, and occasionally won't find my monitor's highest resolutions.
To be honest, Linux really isn't that much more annoying than OS X anymore. Linux has gotten better, but OS X feels like it has gotten a LOT worse.
Some of the old thinkpads had a display where you could turn off the backlight outside and use the sunlight.
I was unfortunate enough that I needed to get a Mac and since I wasn't paying I went for I9 2018 MBP with Vega - this thing sucks horribly - it overheats constantly, blows loudly, the OSX is very unstable - common freezes and getting my 5K thunderbolt monitor to work reliably is a PITA - pray it doesn't lockup on monitor plugin or that it detects the monitors USB hub without a restart - I had to go to a beta to get support for it when I bought it... And not to mention no touch option in a 4k$ device !
Lenovo X1 Carbon running windows is far superior experience for me. Also a big fan of Yoga line for more casual use - GF has one and going from random typing to tablet in bed or in chair is amazing and pair surfing with touch on a large screen is a great experience.
I'm strongly leaning towards a Thinkpad as replacement for my old Macbook, also because of their excellent keyboards. The only downside is that they don't have a 17" laptop without a separate GPU.
Then there's the glued-together chassis, the soldered-in RAM and drives... when those go bad (and they will), you get to just throw the computer away instead of performing a routine replacement.
Apple's shoddily-made computers should be hanging from pegs in blister packs at Walgreen's.
It's too bad that Apple has given up on real computers. And Windows is a pathetic mess... so in the end, computers are returning whence they came: to the domain of scientists, hobbyists, and other serious users.
Apple was an oasis of reliable design because short of Lenovo and Dell other brands were horrible in critical ways(e.g. no decent *nix support, or lack of decent international keyboard), and Thinkpads have a very opinionated design to put it mildly, leaving only Dell for a lot of us.
I kinda hate the current crop of MacBooks, but I am not sure I want a Dell either. For people listening to ATP, I see it as the same issue as John Siracusa and his Oxo cheese grater, there's just no obvious good replacement.
