Sweeping statements like that are not helpful. The argument is far more nuanced. My wife's MacBookPro sometimes fails to wake from sleep, gets incredibly hot under load and doesn't support my displayport MST monitors, but I wouldn't claim that Mac laptops universally "sucked".
That's because some Mac laptops do those things and others don't (it's a combo of OS version, graphics card, chipset, model, and so on).
Whereas the problems I'm talking about regarding Linux are integral to the OS and ecosystem (and occur for everybody, regardless of setup).
Now, some of those problems might be non-issues for others since they never do X or Y things with their Linux laptops. But for me, that need to do X and Y those are problems. X and Y being for example heavy professional video and music editing.
But there are also lotsa things that are genuine problems in desktop Linux use, regardless of use cases. Having problem with a laptop sleep or getting the 3D acceleration / compositor to play properly etc, for example is not just some rare case on the wrong production run / OS combo, but a constant across distros and laptop brands, and usually the solution is to just carefully research and get a support combo (or just be lucky).
The same is true for Linux, which was my point.
> Having problem with a laptop sleep or getting the 3D acceleration / compositor to play properly etc,
I have absolutely no problems with sleep or 3D acceleration (e.g. Steam works fine), my hardware is very well known (ThinkPad). So I don't agree that these are examples of constant issues.
> Heavy professional video and music editing.
Granted Linux is weak here. But is a MacBookPro really that strong? I would use a Windows 10 ThinkPad P-series Xeon, 64GB RAM and a 4K display.
I don't have a use for the touch strip (in fact it gets in the way, as it can get accidentally touched), hate how easily the keyboard can gather detritus and get stuck, and dislike the bigger trackpad.
On the other hand, I dig the enhanced display (brightness, color), better speakers, and am excited about the powerful i9/32GB/2TB options in this years model.
Not sure what they'll do with the strip, but the keyboard has to be fixed.
If it was up to me, I'd replace the touch strip with actual buttons that have tiny OLED screens and can show pictures on them, and try to come up with a 100% water/dust proof keyboard system that still has proper travel.
>My next laptop will probably not be a mac.
That's not an option for me. Linux of all varieties still sucks on laptops (and for creative use, e.g. video and music), and Windows doesn't have the Unix underpinnings that I rely on, plus the OS and ecosystem is even worse (I've used Windows for 20+ years, and use Linux for work every day since 1998).