I keep coming back to this forum every now and then since I sold my 2015 15" MBP dGPU because it simply couldn't handle some of the graphics intensive tasks I threw at it - without revving the fans to pretty loud levels and running far too hot for my liking. I got £1400 for it (cost £1999 new). Since then I've gone through numerous Windows laptops, all of them crap compared to the Mac design, they went back. I therefore decided to get an old iMac (non retina), but with the best graphics card, which blows the AMD M370X out the water, its the 780m 4gb (2013 27" iMac). I got that for £800. With the remaining £600, I bought a Skylake Thinkpad T460 off ebay, since it was not needed for a company project, this cost me just over £500. I've been pleasantly surprised at how good the Thinkpad is - great keyboard, screen and durable.
So for less money than I made from selling the MBP I have an iMac that is silent and powerful with a massive screen and laptop that has a better keyboard than the MBP, a matt near enough retina screen which runs silently and is just as durable as the MBP.
My elongated point here is there are alternatives to new, expensive Macs: the old ones, which had the influence of Jobs still fresh in their design philosophy, included hardware and timely releases (not 3 year old graphics cards and processors) and some of the better Windows laptops (I'll admit, there are fewer decent Windows laptops than there should be). The fact that Apple are pushing the rMB so much is telling for me, they have lost their way and people will simply look elsewhere. I also think Samsung have begun to overtake Apple with the S7... I think they are thinking differently, but not everyone is listening.
I'm actively looking at replacing my current design PC (a huge gaming laptop used to run multiple instances of Adobe CC) to something more portable but potentially less capable.
The gap between the MacBook and some of the premium Windows Laptops out there is getting very tight. Dell in particular have raised the bar with the XPS. This is reflected in the prices. Whilst middle spec and low spec Dell XPS laptops are considerably more affordable than their Mac counterparts, the top of the range XPS 15 infinity with the bells and whistles screen, etc is about the same in cost as the MacBook pro 15 Retina, the two are very closely matched with the Dell coming out on top in several instances.
So why am I still considering and likely to fall on the side of the Mac? Well, if I was using the machine for anything else other than design I would probably be settling on the Dell. However, design means using Adobe and in Windows 10 (based on my current experience) this means guzzling power and generating more heat than a small sun. The other reason why the MacBook is still in the field is reliability - I cannot stress how frustrating it is as a commercial designer to go to your box of paints only to find that the colours are all missed up, the lid for the burnt umber tube has fused to the tube, your brush has been used for glue and without asking someone called (Hong Kong PC Security) has come in and renamed all your colour numbers. My current solution is a PC so powerful you could smelt steel with it but it takes literally 10 minutes to boot and then it will happily decide to schedule an update of a minor programme you never use to the middle of your core working time slowing down the machine to unacceptable levels. Not that it started out this way, you understand? For the first month or two post Windows 10 upgrade it was a beast it has only been over the last month or two when the impact of the byzantine installation really hits. Despite monthly reconbobulations by specialist engineers the machine still clunks and grinds away like a steam engine. On top of this Windows 10 has developed a bug where the fans are always on always at turbo - on battery this eats the power in a matter of two hours, on mains it is simply horrendously annoying. Yes you can fix it, no it's not quick, yes it takes a semi competent home engineer like me most of a day to solve.
This last bit is the rub - yes I could buy the Dell and yes it is oh so pretty but the very thing that makes systems like Android and Windows good is also their main weakness. I am not paid to fix my laptop. I am paid to design and publish. The laptop is a tool like a box of paints that needs to be good to go when I pick it up, good to deliver there and then and not to cause me delays, distractions and unproductive time. My worry about the Dell isn't Dell, It's Microsoft and the shambles cobble-it-together-use-your-users-as-beta-testers approach to everything. I simply cannot afford the instances of Malware, bugs and bvggering about that Windows 10 has imposed on me. If I was buying the machine for the household or for 'normal' use then a mid range Dell would be a no brainer.
I personally have never understood the PC vs Mac Android Vs Apple fanaticism . We all have our requirements and budgets and what suits Peter will not suit Paul. I won't buy an Apple Phone because, whilst I appreciate the quality of the system it is simply not flexible enough for me, I am a confident Android hacker and am very comfortable in that environment. The debate with me has been which Android Phone, I made a schoolboy error in going off piste with an LG rather than my usual Samsung and last week, despite having another 18 months of contract on the LG phone, replaced it with a dual sim Samsung model our of sheer frustration with aspects of the hardware.
Tablet wise I own a Kindle Fire and an Ipad Air 2 - why? well I bought the Fire as a very portable stop gap and it is rather good at what it does... do I prefer it to the Ipad? No, of course I don't but it only cost £30 in the Amazon Sale and if I take it to the beach to read a book or listen to music and I end up leaving it there then it's no great drama. Which do I usually use? The Ipad of course.
Laptop wise, as this is my prime productivity tool it has to be reliable first and foremost and it has to be idiot and muppet proof. I am particularly interested in the aspects of El Capitain that ring fence core elements of the system and stop anyone messing around with them. The inflexibility of the Apple's design in this context is big win for me. If I want to use the MacBook then I want to use it here, now and I don't want to spend 2 hours fixing some lousy issue because some bloody bloatware has decided to go insane and change the registry. Whilst the Dell might be an awesome machine out the box, will it be like this in 6 months time after its OS has been exposed to the idiocy of the web?
So in all likelihood I will be ordering a top of the range MacBook pro in the next week or so - not because it is the ferarri - but because it is the Mercedes Benz (before they went rubbish circa 1995) of the laptop world. Reliable, quality, expensive to fix but don't break down often, that will last years if looked after and can carry your entire household and the dog to boot. Yes there are faster, better value and flashier cars out there but most of them will be washing machines in 3 years time.
