It could be folded back into a (gigantic) tablet, and it even had a mechanical webcam kill switch for added security. It had a gorgeous 4K screen-and a touchscreen at that! It sported a pair of Thunderbolt-equipped USB-C ports, as well as a standard USB-A, a full-sized HDMI port, and an SD card slot. Most looked like relics made of cheap plastic, but there was one that immediately caught my eye: The 15.6-inch HP Spectre x360. In a bit of a daze, I wandered over to the PC laptops.
And for this I was supposed to pay 4,000 bucks? I was shocked. The screen was nice, but that display hadn’t really improved much since my late-2012 model, and it was using processors and graphics cards from nearly a whole year earlier. I hated that it had only USB-C ports, and I imagined myself in dongle hell each time I needed to connect a standard USB-A cord or an HDMI cable. The keyboard was awful-the same “butterfly switch” model that would soon become notorious-and as I tried some online typing tests in the store, the errors piled up. So I went to a Best Buy to try the latest and greatest MacBook Pro.
