Lol, I love Apple haters, they make my day. The fact that you can't afford a good computer, is no reason to hate on the people who can afford an amazing quality laptop. Core i5 or i7 in a 17 inch notebook for $2300? Gotta be kidding, but when you get that smooth 8-9 hours of battery life, while your recharging 4x more times on your Sony (2 hour battery life) il still be going, saves battery cycles, saves time being tied down. 3+ hour plane ride? Can't use your laptop for those 3 hours. I can go that 3+ hours, and still have battery to do everything I want. And your LCD screen doesn't compare to the samsung displays on those $1k laptops. Most people look at price and ask why would somebody pay for this, if that competitor is better? Screen quality is a huge one for laptops. I've owned PCs, I've owned expensive ones ($1.5k-$2k) and there quality is crap. Everyone thinks plastic is the way to go, Apple did it right and went with metal. Go pick up that Sony Z series. It feels cheap, the plasic bends and feels almost like it's going to fall apart. The screen is flexible enough that you feel like you can just... Snap it off with no effort. Other brands have horrible quality. So before you go hating apple, at least have some actual facts to back up what your talking about.
Have a good day