[WildUtah]

The principal problem with abandoning Apple at this point being that you can't get developer grade desktop hardware anywhere outside Apple at a reasonable price.

And if Apple ever goes back to making new laptops, those will probably be head and shoulders better than the competition at the same price, too. We don't know for certain, of course, since it's been two years since Apple has made new MacBook Pros with more than cosmetic adjustments and they may never make new ones ever again. None have been announced, anyway. The price of the two year old version, of course, is the same as it was on original release.

But there's no matching quality and features of the retina iMac for creative work, including software development, even at double or triple the price.

[jeswin]

That reads like a comment on an Apple fansite.

1. For the same price as an iMac, you can buy a 4k display and way, way more powerful CPU, graphics and storage.

2. The superiority of the MacBook Pro is a myth, now more than ever. There are plenty of laptops today with much higher resolution and better color reproduction, and of course, Skylakes and recent GPUs. Dell XPS, Precisions, Surface Books, high-end Thinkpads, ASUS models etc etc.

[ericd]

The missing piece in other laptops, as always, is not raw specs, but build quality, and things like a great trackpad. No one else seems to be able to nail trackpads. I really wish I could buy a different brand of laptop, but I've been spoiled by the MBP's trackpad.

[tluyben2]

I had the same feeling for years until they started making battery and memory and harddisk changes impossible. I got the chance to buy 10 second hand x220s with a bunch of unused 6 and 9 cell batteries. They give me the same feeling as you have about the quality, I run 15+ hours on them with the 9 cell, they are very cheap (I paid $80 per piece), they have excellent keyboards, they perform well for all I need them for including the latest webgl demos I have seen and, something unexpected, I cannot do without the trackpoint anymore. What a waste of muscle movement the trackpad is once you get used to the trackpoint. All a matter of taste but it also runs well enough as hackintosh and, what I like better, I can do iOS dev using OSX on qemu including installs on iOS.

Edit: but agreed, if you need a trackpad, the mb(p) beats all. The x220 trackpad is a piece of garbage and I disabled it right away.

[ericd]

Yeah, used to have Thinkpads, and used the track point exclusively. I find it a bit slower to use, but that might just be my lack of skill with them. If someone brought back the trackball, though... :-)

[oldsj]

Totally agree. I decided to get adventurous a while back on my last laptop upgrade and went with a Dell XPS 13. It had so much potential, specs were great and it felt sold but at the end of the day it won't run macOS and win10 was just not a great dev experience. Switched back to a Macbook pro after less than a month when the screen died on the XPS and it took Dell about a month to fix it.

[prodmerc]

You don't get an XPS. Or any consumer/creative/performance/whatthefever oriented laptops Dell and HP may suddenly decide to offer because of some idiotic marketing decision. Their business workstations is where it's at. Always been solid on all fronts (except design, I guess, but that's subjective).

[haikuginger]

Their business workstations... which cost as much or more than a truly comparable Mac.

[mokus]

This. The trackpad is just about the only thing keeping me on apple hardware these days, but it's a much bigger deal to me than I'd have ever expected. It seems they are the only company that can figure out how make a mobile pointing device that doesn't make me want to throw the computer at a wall.

[my123]

MS nailed it with the Surface Book btw.

[sbuk]

Which is more expensive than a MacBook Pro...

[prodmerc]

> The principal problem with abandoning Apple at this point being that you can't get developer grade desktop hardware anywhere outside Apple at a reasonable price.

HP and Dell have all that.

[arvinsim]

I will concede the point about laptops but saying that

> you can't get developer grade desktop hardware anywhere outside Apple at a reasonable price.

is just false.