Ironically, in the 'other recommended articles' section of Atwood's post, there's a 2006 article entitled "Apple Laptops: Good, Cheap, Fast—Pick Three"
He couldn't have been more right, but somehow he never caught on even after 6 years of constant improvements, and the introduction of the Air. His quote "Sure, you can find a few edge cases where Apple loses, such as the ultraportable category" would elicit laughter these days.
In my (and many others') opinion, apple makes some of the best laptop hardware around. It's hard to argue otherwise. Just look at Atwood's complaints about the Asus' trackpad—a defect almost inexcusable in this day and age, especially given that the Mac trackpads are so damn good. Put OSX, Windows, or Linux on it, whatever you want, it's still extremely well made hardware and will be durable, usable, and hold resale value better. Indeed, other manufacturers are simply trying to play catch-up, and cloning the style and being forced to emulate the build quality (albeit unsuccessfully) of Apple laptops. This is not opinion, this is not zealotry, I have no horse in this race—it's simply appears to be true at this point. It's even hard to argue on the economic standpoint with the price of the base 13" MacBook Air being $1199.
Like I say, I have no horse in this race; I don't care what Jeff Atwood prefers in his computers. It simply seems that there's an interesting faith-based exclusion being made, and I would warn others against making the same conclusion without using facts and experience of their own.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/05/apple-laptops-good-...
He couldn't have been more right, but somehow he never caught on even after 6 years of constant improvements, and the introduction of the Air. His quote "Sure, you can find a few edge cases where Apple loses, such as the ultraportable category" would elicit laughter these days.
In my (and many others') opinion, apple makes some of the best laptop hardware around. It's hard to argue otherwise. Just look at Atwood's complaints about the Asus' trackpad—a defect almost inexcusable in this day and age, especially given that the Mac trackpads are so damn good. Put OSX, Windows, or Linux on it, whatever you want, it's still extremely well made hardware and will be durable, usable, and hold resale value better. Indeed, other manufacturers are simply trying to play catch-up, and cloning the style and being forced to emulate the build quality (albeit unsuccessfully) of Apple laptops. This is not opinion, this is not zealotry, I have no horse in this race—it's simply appears to be true at this point. It's even hard to argue on the economic standpoint with the price of the base 13" MacBook Air being $1199.
Like I say, I have no horse in this race; I don't care what Jeff Atwood prefers in his computers. It simply seems that there's an interesting faith-based exclusion being made, and I would warn others against making the same conclusion without using facts and experience of their own.