I'm in a similar boat and the ones you're mentioning are all ones I've considered, along with some in the comments. Just to throw one more out I haven't seen m

I'm in a similar boat and the ones you're mentioning are all ones I've considered, along with some in the comments. Just to throw one more out I haven't seen mentioned is Razer. I haven't purchased one but have played around with them in person. The Razer Blade laptops in particular seem really nice to me, with nice build, screen and very nice touchpad, in a good form factor and nice specs. The MacBook Pro is maybe the closest thing I've seen to them. There's apparently a version of a Razer released by second company with linux on it (blessed by Razer), targeted at development, although the "regular" Razer laptops can be had for much less cost, more in your range. I used to think of Razer laptop as a "desktop gaming alternative" but some of the newer ones seem like they could be used for development. I've seen the Blades in AMD and Intel form.