I've got a brand-new 2019 16" and am dealing with the widespread crashes on wake from sleep. Honestly, it's a harder decision to send it back than you might think, for several reasons:
1) The hardware quality of other OEMs is bad too. Lenovo has really gone downhill. I sold my maxed-out X1 Carbon 7th Gen, which in less than a year: a) came with an LTE card that never worked for more than an hour at a time; b) had the display bezel start peeling off (it's a sticker!); c) developed a bunch of dead pixels; d) started randomly locking up; e) had weird issues with power usage, where some service related to the touchpad would go crazy and start using all the CPU.
2) Other laptop makers make design choices and trade-offs that I find unacceptable. For me, the 16" MBP is the perfect balance of power, weight, and battery life. It compromises by using a 3K screen instead of a 4K screen, and gets 11+ hours of light usage. Alternatives like the XPS 15 or Lenovo X1 Extreme force you to choose between an FHD panel and good battery life, or a 4K panel and substantially shorter battery life. The Surface Laptop 15" uses a 15W ultra-mobile processor in a machine that runs $2,800 when configured with 32GB of RAM, and has a battery half the size of the one in the MBP 16". Many 15" laptop vendors include a numeric keypad, which is a deal-breaker for me because it forces you to type at an angle to keep your hands centered in front of you when in the home position.
A guy at work installed Windows on his MacBook. He claimed it was the best Windows machine around. I'm not sure if his tune changed after Retina, because I really do have to hand it to Apple there: their high-DPI scaling is flawless.
I bootcamp'd Windows LTSC on my old late 2013 MBP. Your friend's experience is similar to mine. Everything is smooth and the magic trackpad 2 works flawlessly, which used to be an issue with Windows.
I won't switch back to Windows, but if I ever need to, I'd definitely consider using a MBP for it.
I have a similar issues with OEM's laptop quality years ago with both HP and Dell. System76 laptops have been a pleasure to use.
The new Lemur Pro has a 10th gen CPU, does not have a numpad, and does have an FHD panel. They claim up to 14 hours of battery life on Linux. (21 hours coding on VIM.)
I’m often away from a power outlet, so battery life is paramount. The battery life in Bootcamp is unacceptably short (3 hours) because the DGPU is always on.
I was recently using Bootcamp on a relative's 2020 Macbook Air, and I was generally impressed with how well everything worked. Especially the Trackpad, which I remembered being a problem under Bootcamp many years ago.
If I didn't dislike Windows so much, I thought I could see myself using that setup full time.
Even my old MacBook Pro 2012 in BootCamp is very poor under BootCamp. Getting the right drivers for it is the worst bit because who knows whether I should be using Bootcamp 5 or 6? The display brightness and volume keys no longer work. The discrete GPU is used all the time so battery life is very bad.
What magic do I need to perform to do this? It worked and then stopped working after a Windows 10 update and Bootcamp 5 (for my 2012 mac) doesn't know about Windows 10 drivers or something...
If you're going to run Windows you'd likely be better of getting a Razer or one of the other systems that, at least for GPU work, is like an order of magnitude faster than a MacBook Pro.
x1 carbon, yeah good. but the T-Series are better. any thin, laptop you're gonna run into the same macbook problems, due the design constraints of letting the laptop be thin and lighweight. I have a t490, hardware solid all around. though lenovo put clippers on the bottom panel. don't know why. I know previous models t480 etc didn't have clippers.
Yes, this is reality. But for some reason some people decide that they're absolutely certain about the huge scale of issues with Apple products while being absolutely certain about the lack of scale for issues everywhere else. It couldn't _possibly_ be their bubble.
I'm seriously considering the new XPS 15. It hits much of the same great balance as the 16" MBP, and like the Macbook Pro, it has a 16:10 display. I'm gun shy, because of potential coil whine: https://xps-15.fandom.com/wiki/Coil_Whine
> As Coil Whining is a big problem on this model we will try to find out witch parts are causing this noises. First we need to disassemble this notebook and identify the noisy parts.
> I immediately noticed I felt slightly 'uncomfortable' when it was on, and within about 30 seconds realised that it was emitting coil whine at a volume/pitch high enough to physically bother me. It's like an ever-present noise that I can only imagine must be how low levels of tinnitus feels to people who have to deal with that type of thing. I am pretty disappointed to say the least.
I might just assume that this is random internet griping, but I had this exact same problem on my last Dell laptop (admittedly, it was almost 20 years ago) and it drove me insane when working late at night. It's one of those little "quality of life" things I'm willing to pay extra for. (Not to say that Apple doesn't have quality-of-life issues, like randomly removing ports. But for the most part I find I can solve those issues just by throwing money at the problem. I can't do that with coil whine, or a non-centered keyboard, or a laptop that only offers either an FHD or a 4K display and no power-efficient compromise.
I switched to a XPS-15 9570 from a MBP of roughly equiv spec, but previous gen, after the last round of laptop shuffles at work - I went from MacOS to Windows at the same time in order to feel the pain of our environment under Windows.
I'm not saying that it's a bad laptop. But there are just so many little annoying things about it after coming from the MBP and MacOS;
* Trackpad is subjectively worse, but I can't tell you why beyond its just smaller - but I am objectively much less accurate with it and trigger tap-clicks when I don't mean to. The trackpad positioning is also slightly uncomfortable to use.
* Fan noise - the fan curve has it ramping up earlier than a MBP
* Windows was hosed out of the box (fine, fixable, but it wasn't a good start)
* The "soft" covering results in so many fingerprints
* Webcam on the bottom bezel is an awful angle
Pros;
* Great screen, touch is a nice add-on but found I rarely use it now
* Keyboard isn't terrible
* Power adapter isn't a brick
Would I do it again. Honestly, not sure. My daily driver isn't the laptop and I just deal. If I had to use the laptop daily, I'd probably reconsider.
I tried the XPS 15 7590 late last year before I switched back to Mac when the 16" MBP came out.
It felt like absolute garbage in comparison. Trackpad was so bad I had to use the touchscreen to scroll. Internet stopped working intermittently. Display felt like far inferior quality (and, like you said, your choices are too few pixels or too many).
It was honestly a confusing experience to me, like reviewers or other people who treat these machines as comparable were living on a different planet or something. Of course I don't expect everyone to like Macs and there's nothing wrong with preferring the Dell but I don't understand why the quality differences are not more widely acknowledged.
1) The hardware quality of other OEMs is bad too. Lenovo has really gone downhill. I sold my maxed-out X1 Carbon 7th Gen, which in less than a year: a) came with an LTE card that never worked for more than an hour at a time; b) had the display bezel start peeling off (it's a sticker!); c) developed a bunch of dead pixels; d) started randomly locking up; e) had weird issues with power usage, where some service related to the touchpad would go crazy and start using all the CPU.
2) Other laptop makers make design choices and trade-offs that I find unacceptable. For me, the 16" MBP is the perfect balance of power, weight, and battery life. It compromises by using a 3K screen instead of a 4K screen, and gets 11+ hours of light usage. Alternatives like the XPS 15 or Lenovo X1 Extreme force you to choose between an FHD panel and good battery life, or a 4K panel and substantially shorter battery life. The Surface Laptop 15" uses a 15W ultra-mobile processor in a machine that runs $2,800 when configured with 32GB of RAM, and has a battery half the size of the one in the MBP 16". Many 15" laptop vendors include a numeric keypad, which is a deal-breaker for me because it forces you to type at an angle to keep your hands centered in front of you when in the home position.
3) Touchpad and high-DPI scaling.