I really did look around at OEM laptops when I was deciding what to buy. I wanted a laptop which would run Unix, but besides of Dell I could not find any. I was afraid that Chromebook would not have provided the hardware I wanted and I did not to pay extra for Windows license, which I'd never use anyway. After that, I think there were still Lenovo Yoga 2, Samsung Series 9 and rMBP on my list. However, after reading articles about the laptops, I found that Lenovo had bad battery life and buying Series 9 or rMBP would basically pay me the same. At this point Apple's aesthetic product won my choice, given that Series 9 could have problems with Linux drivers and it still had the unused Windows license shipped with it.

So now I have Windows/Ubuntu on dualboot on PC and a Mac laptop. I feel like the Mac is basically the Unix I wanted, without the crappy window manager of Ubuntu. However, the single thing I've loved so far has not been a hardware or aesthetic manner, but rather how Mac opens windows as it boots up from where I left. I never even knew that was possible, but I feel like it has increased my productivity a lot.

When I was shopping for a new labtop I initially settled on the Series 9, but when the 2013 rMBP's came out they really trumped the Series 9 in the hardware department so I returned the Series 9 and got a rMBP. The good thing is that the Series 9 was just as good build quality, and had excellent battery life. Also it was priced well and I think its part of the reason the 2013 crop of Macbooks had to come down in price the way they did.

I think shortly we will see the monopoly that Apple has on high end well designed laptops will come to an end.

I was in a similar situation a year ago and decided to go with the Series 9 with Full HD screen instead of a MBPr.

The weight advantage of the Series 9 and the screen are nice, but battery life, keyboard and trackpad are way behind Apple's quality. My next laptop will come from Apple and i don't see any competitor coming close any time soon. Samsung will drop out of the laptop market in 2015 alltogether btw.