>A $800 macbook has far better build quality than any $500 Windows laptop

Took a peak at the apple store, there is no $800 Macbook for sale. So we're comparing, an older (used?) higher-end Macbook to a budget Windows laptop? Why not compare an older higher-end Windows laptop to an older Macbook? Why not compare a new $500 budget Windows laptop to a $500 used Macbook?

>Its Windows that's the issue for me. Having too many bad experiences and strong bias against Microsoft

You have a have a subjective preference - fine - we all do. So why pretend there is some objective measure here of Apple's superiority? Apple sells very expensive higher-end devices. The reality is that the quality of those devices is about on par with other devices in that class.