I picked up a Surface Laptop 2 a week ago, as a replacement for my older MacBook Air, and so far I’ve been pleased with it. The hardware may not have the fit and finish of a MacBook, but it’s still slim, lightweight and attractive in its own way. The screen is great. And that keyboard...just works.

The article doesn’t mention the Surface product line, it doesn’t contribute much to Microsoft’s revenue, but it allows the company to present itself as a new Microsoft and demonstrate what’s possible with Windows.

If they only could build decent trackpads and gestures that work. On my Macbook I can work perfectly well with only the laptop and the trackpad but on Windows the trackpad doesn't feel right and the gestures are weird.

I'd suggest you consider the Dell XPS line whether you need 13" or 15" laptop. Both laptops have good battery sizes, surprisingly durable coating for what it is, good keyboards, trackpads, screens... And both have a fingerprint reader which works just as well as touch id on a Mac. Oh, and they are very repairable because they're designed to be serviced on-site, so even after warranty runs out, you can service them with quite cheap genuine parts (which are themselves abundant on ebay, amazon, parts-people, aliexpress).

I do have a bias in that I've been a happy user of the two generations of XPS 15 for three years.

I am stuck in the same rut. My 2012 MBP isn't cutting it anymore but I can't see the value in spending $2k for the 2018 MBP.

Get a MB Air 2018. It's about as nice, had TouchID without the Touch Bar (meaning Esc key intact), it's lighter and can be had with 16GB RAM.

Most of my dev is on some cloud somewhere regardless so it's a perfectly capable machine.