Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac
Personally, luxury laptop lines don&#x27;t make sense for me at this point. There was a time when it was the only way to get decent hardware, but those days are long gone.<p>Four years ago I spilled water on my 2009 17&quot; MBP (RIP) and Apple wanted $1200 for the repair. Instead, I spent ~$1300, including three-year accident-protection insurance where they show up at your house THE NEXT DAY, on a Thinkpad T530 and I couldn&#x27;t be happier with it. Quad-core i7, discrete Nvidia GPU, 15&quot; 1080p display, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports, ethernet, displayport, firewire, DVD drive, 300GB HDD. I&#x27;ve since upgraded to a 500GB SSD (and put the old HDD where the DVD drive was) and to 16GB of RAM. Due to the internal metal frame, I&#x27;m sure I could drop the thing repeatedly without consequence.<p>Yeah, it&#x27;s not thin and weighs 1.5 pounds more than a 15&quot; MBP. The extra-capacity battery I ordered it with is losing some capacity, but good thing I can just pop it out for a new one with the flick of a switch. This computer will still be kicking ass in four <i>more</i> years.<p>EDIT: I dug up the invoice: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;cT55A" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;cT55A</a> . $1380 including the three-year warranty&#x2F;accident-insurance. Apparently I can put a mobile broadband card in this thing, cool!<p>Further edit: Perhaps I overstated in my first sentence. I really don&#x27;t mean to put down Macs. I loved my 17&quot; MBP and the 13&quot; company-issued MBP I used at an internship in 2013. Their screens, even pre-retina, are beautiful. The OS and hardware worked perfectly together, e.g. smooth touchpad actions like scrolling and zooming. Though I haven&#x27;t used the new machines everyone is complaining about, my experiences with Apple hardware have only been great. But what <i>I</i> value in a computer just doesn&#x27;t align with the value that premium ultra-thin laptops provide.