I disagree. They used to be heavy duty and well designed, now they just look heavy duty (and well designed if you squint). The best example of the slide downhill is their heavy-duty metal hinge... covers. Inside it's the same hinge everything else has. At my last job we had a recent thinkpad of some sort in the shop, and the media keys rattled around under their wavy bezel, and the bottom of the LCD bezel could be flexed considerably with a light press from your finger. It looked like a thinkpad. But it was not a thinkpad. And post-superfish, I haven't bothered to see if they've improved. They do not deserve my money.
I don't have a macbook either, fwiw. My work laptop is a Dell Precision M4800 (provided by IT), and it seems decent. My home laptop is an old toughbook, which is ugly and the trackpad sucks, but I could use it to bludgeon someone while looking them up on linkedin, so I think it's pretty neat.
Perhaps the ThinkPad you're talking about isn't one of the flagship series (X, T, W mostly). There are a variety of other models Lenovo brands as ThinkPads that are build to look similar to these ThinkPads.
I can add, though, that the hinge in my T450s is by no means as cheap and flexible as those in a rMBP or any slew of other Windows laptops. I can open it to 180 degrees or anywhere in-between and it stays there even while I shake the laptop (far better than the rMBP I had for work and previous laptops I've owned). The outer casing of my (AFAIK carbon fiber/fiberglass) T450s also feels firmer and stronger than that of a rMBP where the metal outer shell flexes, probably due to the lack of a solid skeleton support system inside. These little things just inspire confidence in me that few other products can, personally.
You might be right, and my memory is fuzzy, but I'm pretty certain it was a T-series laptop. It had the five trackpad buttons, trackpoint, square edges and rubberized lid, keyboard light, etc. We also had a T40 that was beat up from shop use, and I remember the difference in quality between the two was painfully obvious. The new machine felt like an imitation.
This is what happens when a US company that built it's reputation on bulletproof reliability sells the division to a Chinese company that built it's reputation on high-quality knockoffs. Just saying...
Unfortunately the new Macbook Pro Ret is terribly designed, imo.
The trackpad may be good quality, but it is massive. Seriously, my hands naturally rest on the pad while i type, which causes all sorts of weird behavior because my palms are mashing all over the "mouse". Furthermore, Apple reduces the "action" of the keys and trackpad press to near zero, what!? The new non-button-bottons of the Macbook Pro Retina are annoying as hell.
I'm frustrated because i don't want to deal with bad Linux laptop drivers, so i want to buy another Macbook Pro Ret, but the damn thing is just crap (to me personally). I'm very frustrated at the UX of that new book.
And lets not even talk about removing the magnetic charge port for a grand total of two usb c ports. I have no clue what Apple is doing these days.
For what it's worth, I got a new MacBook pro(15", touch bar) from work last week. The keyboard stinks for me as a touch typer at around ~115 wpm. My previous laptop was a thinkpad t430, and it's the lack of travel I think that makes it so painful to use. I end up using the "normal" amount of force to touch a key on any keyboard, which seems to be way too much for the MBP's new keyboard.
The trackpad I haven't noticed any problems with while typing...but it does make a really annoying and hollow sounding "pong" sound with each click. I thought it was just me, but apparently the sound is something all the other users experience also. Maybe I'm picky, but I expect really expensive kit to not feel cheap.
The ports are a pain, but work bought me the usual type-a-to-c adapters, and an LG monitor that uses usb type C by default.
All in all..I want my thinkpad back, but some people might like this new machine, who knows? I think if they buy it with their own money, they are a lot more likely to tell themselves they like it, even if they do not.
I have never once experienced the palm rejection problems you're having while typing on the new MBP, nor have any of my friends that have one. And I've been using it nearly 12 hours a day for a month now.
