In the last six months, I've had: a normal MBP, an rMBP, a Lenovo, and a System76 Bonobo Pro.
>* How many Thunderbolt ports did it have?
Who cares? Do you have a Thunderbolt device? If so, does it really provide an appreciable performance benefit over USB 3.0/eSATA/Firewire/DVI-Out? I've actually asked the Apple store and the only thing they've carried for Thunderbolt has been USB hubs and additional display adapters.
>* Number of USB 3 ports?
Most mid-end and higher machines I've seen since 2011 have at least 2, which is the same as my rMBP. Most other machines have also had 2 or more USB 2.0 ports, which my MBPs didn't.
>* Discrete graphics card performance?
Great on most mid-end and higher laptops.
>* What did it weigh?
I'm sorry, were we talking about a laptop for real work or a netbook/tablet? I strongly prefer a laptop with enough ports to be self-contained and a few more ounces of weight than a MBP with 2 ports total, necessitating dragging an external USB hub everywhere (typically these need to be powered to be decent, also). If I wanted a tablet, I'd buy one (and have bought one; a Transformer Prime with keyboard dock, which works great for airplane etc.).
>* The SSD drive was how fast?
I've never compared my SSDs, I guess I have better things to do than benchmark. However, I never noticed an appreciable difference between the SSDs in any of my laptops, desktops, or external enclosures. I've always bought decent SSDs and got my first one in 2011.
>* Battery life?
Highly dependent on usage profiles and applications, but in most cases, I didn't notice any superiority in the MacBooks.
I will say that without a doubt the screen on the rMBP blows everything else I've used out of the water (haven't tried the Chromebook Pixel yet). It was sad, however, that there was poor support in non-OS X operating systems for "HiDPI", basically meaning you had to either run at a resolution that was unreadable without magnifying equipment, or you had to jack the DPI way up and get funny behavior in other applications. That's not Apple's fault, though.
I have a desktop, a "serious work" laptop for remote engagements (gets packed up twice a day), and a netbook and tablet for circumstances where it doesn't make sense to deploy the real laptop (airplanes, etc.).
It's much more comfortable to work on the real laptop, physically and technically. The keyboard is full-size with a numpad. The screen has a decent amount of real estate at a readable resolution. The battery is big and lasts a long time. There are a lot of ports -- all the ports I need, unlike a MacBook with which I always have to scramble for adapters and hubs, especially so with the "lighter" MBPs. The machine has great specs and a lot of disk space; it's much faster than the lightweight laptops I've used (excluding rMBPs, which are in general fairly decent in raw compute power).
It doesn't bother me to carry around a slightly heavier bag than to be stuck without all of that stuff.
>* How many Thunderbolt ports did it have?
Who cares? Do you have a Thunderbolt device? If so, does it really provide an appreciable performance benefit over USB 3.0/eSATA/Firewire/DVI-Out? I've actually asked the Apple store and the only thing they've carried for Thunderbolt has been USB hubs and additional display adapters.
>* Number of USB 3 ports?
Most mid-end and higher machines I've seen since 2011 have at least 2, which is the same as my rMBP. Most other machines have also had 2 or more USB 2.0 ports, which my MBPs didn't.
>* Discrete graphics card performance?
Great on most mid-end and higher laptops.
>* What did it weigh?
I'm sorry, were we talking about a laptop for real work or a netbook/tablet? I strongly prefer a laptop with enough ports to be self-contained and a few more ounces of weight than a MBP with 2 ports total, necessitating dragging an external USB hub everywhere (typically these need to be powered to be decent, also). If I wanted a tablet, I'd buy one (and have bought one; a Transformer Prime with keyboard dock, which works great for airplane etc.).
>* The SSD drive was how fast?
I've never compared my SSDs, I guess I have better things to do than benchmark. However, I never noticed an appreciable difference between the SSDs in any of my laptops, desktops, or external enclosures. I've always bought decent SSDs and got my first one in 2011.
>* Battery life?
Highly dependent on usage profiles and applications, but in most cases, I didn't notice any superiority in the MacBooks.
I will say that without a doubt the screen on the rMBP blows everything else I've used out of the water (haven't tried the Chromebook Pixel yet). It was sad, however, that there was poor support in non-OS X operating systems for "HiDPI", basically meaning you had to either run at a resolution that was unreadable without magnifying equipment, or you had to jack the DPI way up and get funny behavior in other applications. That's not Apple's fault, though.