I've been critical and bitchy about Apple of late, but they make the best laptops in the world, period. Just the touchpad alone tells the story.

People claim that they need to do all sorts of things to justify 32GB laptops or running a dozen VMs. I don't see any evidence that these people really exist in significant numbers.

I agree. Especially for programmers, I understand needing beefy specs if you have super heavy compiler workloads and/or do heavy GPU work, but how many people is that really? And wouldn't most such people prefer a desktop anyway?

I am a software engineer and my personal machine is the supposedly ultra-wimpy 12" Macbook, and I love it. It legitimately handles every workload I throw at it (including running multiple VMs) and it's so tiny and portable that it's basically a zero-cost proposition to take it everywhere I go, which is amazing. To me, sacrificing convenience for spec-sheet wankery is just silly, but I've met a lot of people who I think would probably disagree with that, like it's some badge of nerd honor to be walking around with a 5 lb brick of RAM that's rarely if ever going to be more than 1/4 utilized.

I am not super stoked about the touch bar business, though. It seems like a solution in search of a problem; the main draw of Apple laptops for me has been their refined execution and lack of gimmickry. I am glad that my machine dodged that bullet.

Well yes in terms of specs and performance, but you can't take that with you. If you do GPU work you'll really want a discrete GPU with a complete featureset. Some people were complaining about the new MacBooks having AMD cards, I presume because most DL frameworks perform best with (or in some sad cases only support) CUDA libraries.

The teeth-gnashing and stream of navel gazing blog posts that you see on many tech forums on the topic is 98% nonsense.

If you are in fact the mythical creature who needs a 32/64GB workstation on your laptop, you have a problem unless you make some very significant sacrifices. You need a "mobile workstation" from Dell/Lenovo/HP, and you're essentially giving up major aspects of portability to do so.

Because that's how long these machines have to last, realistically. And I'll bet that 16GB in three years will feel pretty cramped for a lot of higher end users.

Well, speaking at least for the Dell XPS I'm typing this on, it's not a cheap plastic housing. I'm sure there are people who would outright prefer the XPS to a Mac, if you prefer the carbon fiber over aluminum.

Because, this laptop is 4 or 5 years old (work like charm) but the problem with all Dell laptop models are, their adapter has worst quality ever. Simply, Dell adapters are not built to last long.

When Dell adapter is broken (a.k.a the chip inside doesn't send signal that it's genuine one) Dell laptop stops charging the battery, shows annoying adapter not recognized message.

And most annoyingly it drops CPU speed, I have Sandybridge 2630QM cpu i7 with 2.5 Ghz but failing adapter makes it speed 900 Mhz and it doesn't get any faster. IF you plug out the adapter then it turns back to normal but putting back on "not recognized" adapter causes the same issue.

So simply, Dell kills your laptop completely if the adapter is broken. So now I either have to buy a new laptop or find a used adapter to replace my current 4 year one.

The current T4x0, X2x0 and Px0 series Thinkpads are still top of the line machines for anyone from corporate businesspeople to kernel hackers who run BSD on their primary machine.

its hard to find under the radar but its amazing.

light as a feather, 15 inch and can run linux well and overall a fantastic machine.

The X1 is made of magnesium and carbon fiber, definitely not a cheap feeling housing.