What makes you feel that there are no viable competitors? On the hardware, build quality, screen quality, customization, fixit score and ports scales the HP Spectre and Lenovo carbon have been winning critics.
Is it osx only that makes you say this? I've seen hackintoshes in the past, would that be viable?
Yes, macOS and companion iOS are the real problem here. Together with the hardware they form an "ecosystem", which is conducive to getting things done, especially for people who need to juggle many responsibilities at once (think entrepreneurs/bootstrappers) and who really do not have time to deal with OS issues.
And please believe me that I did my homework before saying "no viable competitors". I regularly use Linux, Mac OS and Windows. It's not even close. I mean, seriously, Linux doesn't even have a sane concept of a system-wide clipboard. So in the end, hardware itself doesn't matter much, unless you mostly stare at it. If you want to use it to get work done, what matters is the entire package: hardware, OS, application software, companion devices.
Yeah, and millions of people in the world don’t have running water or any kind of heat in their homes, and those homes don’t have any insulation. And those homes might not even have three walls, much less four.
Just because millions of people might live in abject poverty doesn’t mean that I should aspire to doing so.
Is it osx only that makes you say this? I've seen hackintoshes in the past, would that be viable?