Until you pick them up, use them, have them break, and try to get support. I used to be the guy pointing out how there are Windows laptops that are just as good as Macs. It wasn't until about 2 years ago that I just completely gave up on the Windows market and just converted fully to Apple's ecosystem. Couldn't be happier. The Windows market is in a constant state of "almost as good as Apple."
The trackpad on my thinkpad broke. I spent 10 minutes on the phone with technical support that actually knew what I was talking about and they mailed me a whole new part. I replaced it and went on my way as happy as could be.
In contrast:
By friend who owns a mac tried to set up a appointment because her hard drive was making the sound of a grinder. They told her that they could not make an appointment on the phone, she needed to use the iPhone app to do that. Well, she doesn't have an iPhone so the only option she had was to stand in line at the apple store 40 minutes away and wait. She spend two days doing this since it closed before they got to her on the first day and then the took her hard drive and replaced it while erasing all her personal data. It's a good thing I made a backup first.
Great Customer Service for sure almost as good as Comcast.
Sure, every once in a while I'm sure someone has a bad experience with their support but I feel it's a well-accepted notion that Apple has the best support in the consumer tech industry. A few sources I found in a couple minutes of searching:
I've dealt with Dell, Microsoft, Acer, Asus, and HP in the past on multiple occasions for each, and it was always a headache. With Apple, it was always as simple as walking into the store and walking out with my issues resolved. I've even had them fix a keyboard that broke due to my fault on an out of warranty machine for just the cost of parts. The fact that you can go to a physical location and get service puts them on a different level.
I have to fly or take a ferry to get to an Apple Store. There isn't one on Vancouver Island. So it's great when you can get to one, but if you can't the support is not so good.
What country are you in? When I had some "user serviceable" part on ThinkPad break (in the UK), I had to send it off for a month(!), after spending 45 minutes on the phone trying to convince them to send me the replacement part.
I have a macbook and an xps. I like the xps better for several reasons.
It is difficult if not impossible to output a macbook to a tv over hdmi and also send audio. Also the dongle that does hdmi conversion breaks all the time. Our office has gone through like 4-5 of them.
It is/was very difficult to disable your laptop display when plugged into a monitor in MacOS(I doubt they have fixed this issue). Also the macbook is crazily overpriced.
I'm guessing you're using the Air? I've had the Air with the Display Port to HDMI dongle and now have the Pro with HDMI built in, neither had issues with outputting HDMI sound. Just plug it in, and make sure the audio output is set to the TV in the Sound settings in System Preferences.
Never tried that second part, but the multi monitor support in the last couple releases of MacOS have been amazing.
> It is/was very difficult to disable your laptop display when plugged into a monitor in MacOS(I doubt they have fixed this issue). Also the macbook is crazily overpriced.
Can't you just do clamshell mode? I haven't had any issues with that with my Macbook Air.
