> The latter is the most important: Apple with its ultra tight control down to the tiniest chip on the motherboard can tune the performance in ways that cannot ever be achieved by either Windows or Linux, with 6+ hour usage times being the norm. Windows laptops with this usage time usually are way more than expensive than Macbooks, are heavier than a piece of granite rock, or a combination of both.
This definitely used to be the case (and was one of the main reasons I used macbooks over windows laptops, the other being the touchpad) but this is no longer true (outside of cheapo laptops) imo.
High quality ultrabooks like the dell xps 13 rival the macbook in build quality and battery life, and afaik are not more expensive than macbooks.
I believe that hipsters/nerds migrated to Apple for two things: build quality (most laptops these days STILL are made of plastic, and well as someone who often eats near his machine or operates it with pizza-greasy fingers I can say that an Apple laptop just doesn't give a sh.t while all my Windows laptops end up looking very indecent after a year), and battery lifetime.
The latter is the most important: Apple with its ultra tight control down to the tiniest chip on the motherboard can tune the performance in ways that cannot ever be achieved by either Windows or Linux, with 6+ hour usage times being the norm. Windows laptops with this usage time usually are way more than expensive than Macbooks, are heavier than a piece of granite rock, or a combination of both.