And it's a sad state of affairs in HN when I get downvoted for that, felt like I'm on Reddit now.
If we are free to use anecdotes I will base my evaluation on two friends who are copywriters and another one who's a tech writer. All of them using an Air or a normal MacBook for the work they do.
I'm curious on what your usage is as a writer for paying a premium on the Pro, care to elaborate?
P.S.: English is not my native language and I'm really trying to not sound condescending, I'm genuinely curious.
But for people who are writers and nothing else, I think the retina display was a big draw when the machine first came out.
The point I was trying to make above is that people who code, or use a pro laptop for editing or whatnot, still have to do a lot of writing as part of their job. So the keyboard on these machines matters a lot. And pro-users tend to be on their laptops all the time, which makes the ergonomic issues more important.
Note that the keyboard on the MacBook is even worse than the one on the new MBP.