The best laptop I ever had was an i5 2010 Macbook Air (paid about 1000€ at the time). Reasonably fast, incredibly think and light, instant wake-from-sleep, gre

The best laptop I ever had was an i5 2010 Macbook Air (paid about 1000€ at the time). Reasonably fast, incredibly think and light, instant wake-from-sleep, great screen (for the time), great trackpad, decent keyboard, long battery life. Having owned previously only bulky Windows laptops (I still have nightmares about a company-issued 17' Sony Vaio, heavy as heck and with the grand total of 30 mins battery life), it was a joy to use. When the screen cracked I was heartbroken, decided that somehow I needed more power and splurged for an i7 2013 15' Retina Macbook Pro with dedicated graphics. Apart from the gorgeous screen, I cannot think of any real benefit I got over the previous model: - More USB ports ? I only used the occasional USB drive on the road, when at home I always use the single port of my hub with mouse/keyboard/ext.drive attached. - Faster CPU ? It was noticeable when compiling big projects or very specific things like video conversion, but 90% of the time spent "developing", I'm just looking at code in an editor. - More RAM ? Ditto. Never felt that the Air was slow or unresponsive due to lack of RAM, at least for my use cases. - Faster GPU? The main reason was gaming, but mobile GPUs are a far cry from their desktop counterparts, and under sustained load it is throttling all the time anyway. Of course it might be just Apple's fault, but I cannot say that my previous experience with Windows Laptops was any different. What I lost in exchange was portability. Not that the 2013 15' Pro is bulky, but I could casually drop the Air in my backpack without really feeling it, and open it during my commute if I felt like it. I could use it on the couch, in bed, when traveling. Now the competition has catched up, and there seems to be great Windows laptops that are a serious alternative to Macbooks. Regardless, it is clear to me that my main priority for a LAPTOP is portability and construction quality. I'm fine with reasonable compromises in terms of speed, screen, keyboard. I really don't care about number of ports, upgradeability. This long and boring post to make the point that different people have different requirements, if your personal ones differ from what Apple is offering, there are plenty of alternatives nowadays, all the drama is difficult to swallow, for me.