Hardware-wise, my ASUS 15" Zenbook Pro (UX501VW) is about as polished as my old 2011 15" Macbook Pro (the 15" unibodies were my favorite Apple form factor ever). And I paid less than half of what I paid for my old MBP. Sure, you can get nitpicky, but for the stuff I care about and notice, they're pretty much the same.

Worth noting, I consider ASUS to be a second tier PC brand, generally a notch below the likes of a Lenovo, Dell or HP business laptop.

Cause that's what we need: Shiny, slow computers! Sign me up for a bakers dozen.

I don't understand the fanboy defence of everything apple does, even the obviously stupid stuff. Upgrade the hardware is such a no brainer every hardware manufacturer does it nearly yearly. Except apple.

yeah man like I said my experience is that macbooks these days are anything but polished - in the sense that even when everything works, the experience has some fundamental flaws (sub-par keyboard, unnecessary smartbar, dongle bonanza). That's not polished.

IMO both Dell and Lenovo make machines that are either as good or better visually than current gen macbooks, and they absolutely stomp Apple on performance.