Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

Three or four years ago I'm pretty sure I spent around $1300 on my 13" MacBook Pro, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD. Not as many ports as yours, but 2 USB 3.0, two thunderbolt, and an SD card slot is plenty for me. "Retina" screen, great trackpad. Pretty small and thin and well-built.

Got it refurbished from Apple saved a couple hundred bucks. It did have a fan problem right before the warranty expired -- when I sent it in for repair, they ended up replacing (with no charge) huge amounts of it, in addition to the fan problem I specified (replaced the entire graphics board and logic board, as well as entirely new display, because their diagnostics found problems I have no idea what but I'm not complaining -- I think the moral is always take a macbook into the apple store for a checkup right before the warranty expires, come up with something small to say there's a problem with, have them run all their diagnostics, be friendly and polite to the apple desk person).

I'm pretty darn happy with it. It's still plenty fast enough 3-4 years later. (Looking it up, it's dual core i5, but I've never really wanted for more cpu; I'm not a gamer though it must be said). I think when I bought it a newer model had _just_ been released, and price reductions on the model I got.

So I dunno, it seems pretty comparable (some things better, some things worse, but a pretty similar machine) to the thinkpad you purchased for a comparable price, really, doesn't it? Not neccesarily better, not neccesarily worse, depends on what you're looking for, similar price.

I am not sure I like the direction macbooks have gone since then, in price-to-features, it's true. I'm not alone, which is why Apple is trying to assuage mac owners.

>Yeah, it's not thin and weighs 1.5 pounds more than a 15" MBP.

It also doesn't run OS X, and lots of other stuff. If you try to understand it as "value for money", then there are far better computers for number crunching that are way cheaper than a Mac. Instead with Mac you get lots of marginal returns, that, if you have the money can appreciate, and they are all focused on things other than raw performance per dollar.

Weight, size, construction, design, no crap ware, magsafe (rip), great trackpad, first to get hi-dpi screens, first to get modern more powerful ports, first to ditch legacy stuff, and good battery life (despite some recent problems it has been traditionally better than the PC competition, even for units 2x the size). Plus a whole ecosystem that has the same values, of smartphone, tablet, watch, desktop, Cloud services, etc. And a great resale value.

Also Apple traditionally uses it bargaining/money to order the best parts of what it orders (quality assurance wise). They don't get the most powerful Nvidia, for example, but for the model of Nvidia they do get, they get the most careful produced units. Same for less/no stuck pixels on the monitors, etc. Don't have an exact reference now, but I've read that from 2 different people working for other OEMs/suppliers. Of course its also inevitable for every product run that runs in the millions that they also get some duds as they had in the past. The screens on MBPr's or iMacs have for example, have consistently been top of the crop, with respect to color, brightness, etc compared to other (cheaper or not) laptops. Compared to dedicated pro screens that cost the same as the whole MBPr just for the screen, no, but that's not the point. The point is in the balance.

Even not having to bother with 200 customization options is a feature for some.

About the "it's not thin and weights 1.5 pounds more". This might seem like OK tradeoff to you, but is enough to drive some people crazy, like this guy:

I’m 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. I’m personally just hoping that I’m ahead of the curve in my strict requirement for “small and silent”. It’s not just laptops, btw – Intel sometimes gives me pre-release hardware, and the people inside Intel I work with have learnt that being whisper-quiet is one of my primary requirements for desktops too. I am sometimes surprised at what leaf-blowers some people seem to put up with under their desks. I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room – by far – should be the occasional purring of the cat. And when I travel, I want to travel 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)

    > I don't get the attraction of luxury laptop lines at this point.

I'd love a luxury laptop: a machine I could upgrade and maintain with minimum hassle, a machine with a properly designed cooling system that would last years without breaking down.

Apple doesn't make those anymore. It makes machines with parts glued together, and drives soldered to the board, whose GPUs overheat and die after a few months.

If a modern mac does not meet that definition, then no modern hardware labeled as a 'PC' does.

It's not about wether it can run Windows or Linux. It's about wether it can run PC-DOS 1.0 and applications written for it.