The hardware is not even that good. I presume people like it because it looks slick and serves as a status symbol.
* lack of usb ports necessitating dongles * lack of hdmi/dvi outs * No camera lens cover * Uncomfortable chiclet keyboard * oversized touchpad * overheating * lack of power cores leads to slower parallel compilations
I do appreciate the ease of use of (especially) the network utilities of mac, but it's definitely not my preferred machine.
My workplace provides me with a MacBook yes.
I honestly prefer using my 5 year old Dell G5.
I absolutely hate MacBook screen. It's reflexive, whereas I very much favor the matte finish of basically every other manufacturer.
Fan noise for me is essentially irrelevant. Not that my Dell makes that much noise anyway. I am normally listening to music while I work, and when gaming there's in game sound.
Speaker quality is shit on either laptop. My cheap speaker/subwoofer set that is connected to the docking system is leagues better than the laptop speaker (that I never use anyway).
Touchpad is... as bad as any other touchpad? I use a mouse for a reason.
Battery life is the only thing a MacBook would have in its favor. Again, irrelevant. 99% of the time it is plugged into power.
MacBook comes with a major downside of being tied to OSX however. This cannot be understated.
I think macOS has the worst window management of any major OS especially for power users. It's so bad that buying a half dozen third party apps to "fix" the UX disaster that is macOS has basically been normalized.
I don't like any touchpad so even if a MacBook touchpad is better it's still just the best worst method for mouse input.
I think Apple makes nice hardware though. But I also work docked basically 99% of the time and use it as a desktop replacement so many of the Apple hardware advantages are moot for me. I'm kind of shocked when I see people voluntarily working on a laptop undocked. Working with a crappy keyboard, a crappy touchpad, and a small screen is torture to me even if it's the best crappy keyboard, the best crappy touchpad, and the best small screen.
Speakers bad in a MacBook? Come on man at least try to be objective.
How dare someone doesn't like a MBP?
