I don't have a specific recommendation for you, but I feel your pain and agree with all the issues you've raised. My 9 year old Mac finally died, and I thought

I don't have a specific recommendation for you, but I feel your pain and agree with all the issues you've raised. My 9 year old Mac finally died, and I thought long and hard about buying a new Mac as a replacement. I decided against a new Mac because I just couldn't bring myself to buy another machine with something like the touchbar. My old Windows machine had something like it, and I kept spending mad amounts of time debugging WiFi problems only to realize I had accidentally turned off WiFi with an errant touch. Totally stupid. My solution was to use my old (hated) Windows machine rather than spending more (lots) of money on a new hated Macbook. The Windows hardware stinks and feels chintzy but I already had it, and only needed to buy some software to bridge a functionality gap between the OSX and Windows X experience. Then Spectre / Meltdown news broke, and I realized I won't be buying anything new until Intel and manufacturers have a reliable fixed new product line on the market. Anything purchased now will still need a microcode update to fix this issue.