I've been perfectly happy with a surface book 2, and various Lenovo and HP laptops. They each have better and worse product lines. Currently rocking an HP elitebook for personal use and a MB Pro for work.
The hardware quality is more or less the same on both. With the pro, you get a moderately better touchpad, a bit thinner and metal chassis. On the other hand, crap keyboard and the abomination that is the touch bar, and no legacy ports.
Personally, I don't think I would buy Apple for myself ever again, but that's just me.
This is where it started... https://www.engadget.com/2009-05-24-dell-now-offering-studio...
I primarily navigate by keyboard, so the difference between an acceptable and amazing trackpad is pretty minimal for my preferences. On the other hand, port wonkiness, temperamental wifi, okay keys, mediocre battery, driver issues and an utterly useless webcam convinced me to ditch the XPS the first chance I got. It's amazing I used it nearly 18 months.
Milage may vary with other manufacturers, it doesn't look like you would change to another manufacturer. Which is ok.
Check business notebooks, from HP or Lenovo. (I forgot one particular Dell series.)
so what is the laptop that would meet this standard for which you're making a judgement?
So far, apple hardware has been superior to any other manufacturer, even with their warts, and their anti-consumer practises (of not having replaceable batteries, etc).