re: If you were starting over

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But anyway, where did the Apple subject come from? Are we just trying to bait the Apple Knights in every thread now?

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OP posted a vague, unanswerable question. Someone said Macs are stupid. Another fellow asked why they were stupid. I gave my input. That said, I'm not here to argue all day over this. Everyone has their preferences. However, I do have two things I'd like to point out.

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I've been repeating this and explaining why like a broken record on this forum for a while, but it's mostly unheard by everyone except the few who already understand what I'm talking about. Apple spends money on the display and the design/materials for the chassis to make it more physically durable (and arguably more difficult to access/repair).

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I understand what you're talking about quite well. You're saying that the quality of the product they deliver is meant to be of the highest, most "durable" quality and that that's where the upside lies. I understand that. That said, this isn't why it's more difficult to access/repair. It's more difficult to access/repair because they don't want users to attempt their own repairs. In fact, they're actively working towards preventing it for fear of destroying the product. They've begun soldering parts to the board to prevent users from performing their own repairs. You can't convince me that they're soldering RAM to the motherboard because it "makes the system more stable and durable". They're trying to make sure that all money is funneled to them, and they do that by soldering the parts users would upgrade on their own (to avoid a ridiculous $200 charge for a RAM upgrade). That's why they were deemed "as unrepairable as you can get". That's a major slap in the face to their tech savvy users.

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And the reason there is not sufficient backlash about these sorts of problems is that with all the fairly decent hardware you'll find in a Macbook Pro, very few Apple users are the type to actually take advantage of it and do anything that pushes the hardware enough to touch those thermal limits.

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This is untrue. The problem shows up the most in unibody models with discrete graphics. When doing something as simple as watching a YouTube video in HD, it becomes insanely hot. While it doesn't hit the levels that Apple claims it can handle, it still gets jumps in temperature for menial tasks. It's not as simple as saying "Most people won't push it that hard."

The reason it's a problem in these MacBook Pro models is because, as I said before, there is a very significant flaw in the design. The temperatures Apple claims it can handle don't account for an issue in cooling. Sure, it can handle it for a little while, but with sustained high temperatures over the life of the machine, it's not going to hold up. Heat kills hardware. It's a fact that Apple uses the aluminum chassis, especially the bottom, as a form of heat dissipation. Look at it as a giant heatsink. This is all good and fun at idle temperatures, but anything beyond light web browsing sends heat skyrocketing. Because of the abysmal design and size of the fans, the heat simply isn't being handled as quickly as it should. Before I ever had a bad experience with a Mac, I was telling people that they were going to see issues with the higher end models over time. Comparable hardware in the same tier of laptop have a considerable amount more cooling methods. The slim form factor mixed with the attempt to use the case as a method of heat dissipation is causing these issues, period. Outside of the Razer Blade and few other high level laptops, there aren't any other laptops on the market that try to fit that much power in such a confined space that limits the ability to cool. Apple is sacrificing the longevity of their products for aesthetic purposes, and they keep going back to the same design when there are glaring issues every year or two that require major action.

As for your ASUS, you have to really keep their fans in good shape and all vents clean. Otherwise, you'll see some issues. They tend to have wide vents on those Republic of Gamers editions that allow a shitton of dust in.