Have you tried either of those or is this just an assumption? Both sony and lenovo have put out some respectable machines. I see no reason for people to look down on anything that isn't what they personally use.
I've read about the trackpad and battery life in reviews. As for the fact that it's a knockoff, this is targeted specifically at the Lenovo which's design is blatant copy of the MBP. Those guys had a pretty solid reputation with the ThinkPad line, they don't need to place themselves as imitators, that's like admitting you're inferior while Lenovo was actually one of the last companies to rival Apple on build quality.
The day a single Windows laptop will have a trackpad (and trackpad software) as good as a MacBook, I think the world will rejoice and all tech sites will make a huge deal out of it, with reason. As it is not a single one come even close to what was introduced over 4 years ago on Apple laptops and it's a shame.
While it's true that I look down on those computers and that I use something else, I'm not looking down on them
because I use something else. If Apple competitors came out with a laptop with a trackpad that work as well as a MacBook's, good battery life, solid build quality, good screen, no bloatware, and a design that wasn't a blatant ripoff, I would have a lot of respect for it.
It simply doesn't happen.
I'm judging laptops on their absolute value, not relative value. It's not because the whole laptop industry suck that I'm going to pretend that a single laptop individually doesn't suck simply because it's not worse than the rest. Windows OEM simply don't seem to care anymore and just race to the bottom and I'm not encouraging this. There's no progress in screen quality, resolution, trackpad quality, speaker quality, build quality, bundled software since a whole decade. Some of those are even getting worse. The only things that improve are the internals, and that's because they're made by different suppliers, not the OEM themselves.
Call me a snob for putting those computers down, but I truly think the (non-Apple) laptop industry deserve my complains and should care about making computers that are actually good a little more instead of just competing on pricing. Could you imagine if, say, all car companies made cars with the same philosophy? No innovation for a decade, some regression even, but let's just bring the price down each year.
Maybe I just have high standards for computers but it doesn't change the fact that no Windows OEM seems to even try to meet high standards anymore. (Well, there's actually a couple exception, but none were mentioned here). All the real improvements are made in the smartphone/tablet world. I actually do wish they cared, that way Apple could actually have some competition and stop charging a premium for features that should actually be standard on pretty much any laptop.
That comment Linus Torvarlds made should simply be applied to every part a laptop OEM is responsible of.
/rant
