My previous ThinkPad X1 is a superior device to my 15 inch i9 MBP (2018) in every way - thermals, keyboard, touchscreen, issues with 5k display for over a year, Bluetooth issues.
I needed a Mac for iOS development so I went all out since I do all sort of development - and this is by far the worst premium device I owned.
With that said M1 Macs look really good and I'll probably upgrade if they refresh the 16 inch.
I did use a thinkpad X1 for a long time some years ago, I actually want to go back to an X1, it is the best alternative. But honestly, if I go back to it would be making a good bunch of trade-offs as well and mostly to satisfy my inner wish of using Linux and Open Source software instead of Macos.
But still:
1) After a few months, the screen of the thinkpad started to get permanent scratches from the keyboards. This is a common problem, see [1]
2) The keyboard is better, totally agree. But the trackpad is much, much worse. I managed to adapt to the bad keyboard on the mac, I didn't manage to adapt to the trackpad on the X1.
3) The quality of the screen has no point of comparisson. Color gamut, calibration, resolution, etc. I like the WQHD screen, but it is not available for the X1 on many countrie outside the US. In my country (Spain) you only have the UHD which is a fantastic battery draining mirror or the FHD which reminds me of the nintendo 64 when looking at it. Let's not talk about scaling hi dpi resolutions, and deciding if using Wayland or Xorg so that I can plug an external screen with different resolution, etc.
4)Battery usage is not as optimized
5) I think nowadays this is better, but at the time (around 3 or 4 years afgo) I had lots of problems on Linux with bluetooth, resuming after suspending, and the fingerprint reader. Hopefully this has improved since then.
6) Price wise, they are as expensive as an equivalent macbook
A being "good" or "bad" has a lot of aspects to it. It is not just "It has the same CPU freq and the same amount of memory then they are equivalent" (not what you're saying but something many say when doing this comparison). Build quality matters, integration/support with the operating system matters, support matters, upgradeability matters, resale value matters.
And also, just compare the f*ng mess the Lenovo website is. Every time I think about going back to thinkpad, browsing such a terrible, slow, clunky, outdated, terrible thought out website makes me regret it and just close the tab.
I have to admit I never use trackpad - I always carry a Bluetooth mouse (keyboard as well with my MBP because of how terrible it is) and for couch surfing touch screen is king for me. I also had a yoga and would go for that X1 next - the versatility is amazing (bed/couch/travel media use in the reverse V position is 10x better than tablet and laptop)
Battery life is about equal on this MBP - it's just a terrible CPU for a mobile device. But more importantly I use battery about 1-2% of the time - ergonomics are just not good enough for it IMO.
X1 Yoga with an AMD CPU would be my ideal laptop but unfortunately it seems like AMD gets pushed to gamers and budget laptops still
Resale value is the closest thing to an objective measure we're going to get.
The butterfly keyboard era Macs took a nosedive in this metric, because they were bad computers.
I have what turns out to be the last Intel 16" MacBook Pro which Apple will ever build. I suspect the Intel part of it will make its resale value kind of grim, but the keyboard, speakers, monitor, build quality: all great.
MacBooks traditionally resell at a significant premium, because they're good computers with a long useful life. I expect this will be true for the M-series as well, although it's too soon to know.
I bought a new Intel 13" MBP just before the M1 announcement specifically because I needed an x86 machine.
No intention to sell but I suspect resale value will stay OK as there is likely to be ongoing demand from those who want a Mac for x86 cloud development (and non-technical users probably don't care if its x86 or M1).
That's good to hear. The critical issue for me would be running an x86 (incldung AVX) Docker image on M1. Reasonably sure that's not going to happen in the near future.
