Top of the line XPS 15, including touch screen is $1650:

- i5 Quad Core (i5-6300HQ)

- 8GB RAM (upgradeable to 32)

- 256GB HD (upgradeable)

- 2GB Graphics card (GTX 960M)

Lowest quality new model MBP (15" w/ touch bar) is $2399:

- i7 quad core

- 16GB RAM (not upgradeable)

- 256GB HD (not upgradeable)

- 2GB Graphics card (Radeon Pro 450)

So for $750 you get a little more RAM, slightly better CPU, and Mac build quality (I have no idea how the graphics cards compare). That seems like a pretty big difference to me for fairly similar specs. Especially considering that you can upgrade your XPS in the future.

I'm on a Macbook Air now, but for my next laptop I'll be deciding between the 2 above (or possibly the last model rMBP).

Getting a little off topic here, but I've bought several XPS 13s (note not 15s) for work and have been pretty underwhelmed by the performance. Not sure if it's a thermal management issue or what.

Based on the Ars review of the HP Spectre x360 [0], though, I'd probably add that to your list as well. I'm eager to try one myself.

[0] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/hps-new-spectre-x360-...

I upgraded from a $3200 rMBP (mid-2012) to a $1700 XPS13 i7 (9343/2015). The speed and battery life of the XPS13 have seemed on-par with the rMBP to me.

If I was underwhelmed about anything, it was the rMBP feeling slightly slower than the bottom-of-the-line MBP I got in 2010 with upgraded RAM & SSD.

Granted, the hampered rMBP performance was probably mostly due to that specific model being underpowered for the new retina display.

> (not upgradeable)

True, this is a real issue, and I agree we're paying premium_price^2 for the newest MBPs.

However, in this day and age of networked computing and fast WiFi why would 256 GB not be enough? Did you check the performance of the XPS SSD compared to the MBP?

I take it the RAM is DDR4. The 16 GB LPDDR3 RAM means more battery life. The resolution of the 2015 MBP 15" is also in between 1080p and 4k, a sacrifice, for battery power.

The graphics card isn't upgradeable on either machine. And I did look at the XPS. I'm not going to buy a machine which makes a lot of noise, and the XPS has coil whine. Why don't you compare to the 2015 rMBP? I tried out the butterfly keyboard of the 2016 version in store and I found it far too noisy (the travel also isn't a good aspect). Do you really need the graphics card? Have you looked at eGPU?

> in this day and age of networked computing and fast WiFi why would 256 GB not be enough?

My rMBP is only 256GB, and while it's "enough" - only barely. Having to think about disk space regularly and make sure to remove software I'm not using regularly is something that I've not had to do in a very long time. It's tight enough that I'm hesitant to dual-boot Windows with Boot Camp like I have on every other Mac I've owned for gaming and such.

This is the typical response I get from Apple users whenever I ask how to do something with a Mac that just can't be done.

I've been hearing it for 20 years from Mac users: "Why would you want XYZ feature anyway?"

It's hilarious and there is no wonder in my mind as to why the vast, vast majority of businesses use Windows and not Mac.

> there is no wonder in my mind as to why the vast, vast majority of businesses use Windows and not Mac.

Well, I can't speak to most businesses but every corporate I've worked at in the last few years has been characterised by an SOE that involves strangely spec'd machines eg. only 4GB RAM but 1TB HDD which is 95% empty but thrashes nicely when swapping (just running browser with a few tabs, office and outlook). It will also most likely be an i7 that never gets to top out, meanwhile the underwhelming wifi infrastructure (not PC specific) means boot times (due to profile and policy replication) are in the order of minutes. Oh, and regardless of how old they are they never get upgraded (eg extra RAM, switch to SSD) because the bureaucracy disincentivises doing so.

That's a bit of a non-sequitur. I understand corporations order the wrong configuration all the time...

At least they have a configuration to choose from! If they shopped Apple, they'd get 3 choices: Cheap overpriced crap that they have no control over, overpriced crap that they have no control over and Expensive overpriced crap that they have no control over. But hey, it would be shiny! They'd then just have to build their own infrastructure to manage their fleet of Macs like Google did because nobody else builds stuff like that for Macs since nobody uses them in business.

Corporates are a different fish to SMEs though. Every SME I've seen in the last few years has at least some hardware that's been recycled by upgrading.

If you don't care about touch bar / touch screen it's similar. $1400 XPS vs $1999 MBP, a $600 difference, but the MBP doesn't have a dedicated graphics card.

And the XPS without the dGPU is cheaper too...

It's only true if you focus on one or two features or specs and ignore everything else. When people make that claim they usually find something with the same CPU and amount of memory and use it as a comp.

Of course. But considering things I do not consider essential is like saying "yes" to "you save $1 when buying 5 apples, we charge for 4" when you only wanted one in the first place. The OP wrote about the specific "sw dev" group, not the average user. (e.g.: If I could downgrade the resolution of the displays for a significant discount, apple hw would be much more tempting to me - after all, 99% of the time I spend on computers I look at monospace fonts in emacs...)

I feel like text is where the retina screens really pay off. I'm not even sure if I could notice the difference looking at photos. But a good font on a retina display is something I still notice, even after having used it for 2 years+.