I have friends at Sony. Sony issues Thinkpads to its own staff. I would be very surprised if Apple did the same.
You are kidding me, any reason on why?
No-one (that I know) knows for sure, it could simply be that management thinks that all the fancy multimedia stuff is a distraction from Real Work. Even so, it doesn't fill me with any sort of confidence.
Just curious, can I ask where?
(I've been at Sony for nearly nine years and almost all laptops I've seen have been VAIOs).