>> I really want to switch away from Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything that fits in the intersection of "easy to use UNIX GUI" and "well built hardware

>> I really want to switch away from Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything that fits in the intersection of "easy to use UNIX GUI" and "well built hardware. Perhaps you should explain why you want to switch away from Mac, since MacOS is probably that best platform that satisfies both of your criteria. It sounds like there are some deeper reasons for switching. Speaking for myself, I switched away from Macs to Windows a few years ago because I saw a very expensive "soldered-on-everything" future with the Macbook Pros (damn, I loved the expandability of the old Unibodies) and a very bad customer service experience with a product (early 2011 15" MBP) that should have been recalled before mine turned into a brick (they didn't publicly address the issue until months after I was forced to get a new laptop). If I didn't have the well-known problem with 2011 MBPs, I probably would have sucked up the price premium and bought a new MBP in spite of how expensive it is to max out an MBP.