@RavenSword: If you are strapped for money, the retina Macbook might not be the best decision. Honestly, I would love to have a Macbook Pro 15' with all the fancy stuff... but it took me a long time to convince myself that I don't need all of that in a laptop. I specifically use my laptop for general browsing, applications, and programming (I am a software engineer).
Mar 14, 2017 - If you want to develop for OS X or iPhone, Ruby/Rails stuff, switch to a Mac. You technically could do that on Windows too, but for those communities, it's not the expected convention, you'd be fighting with your system more than others, if you want to deploy to the iOS app store, you need a Mac.
Honestly, if you are really considering the Macbook route and can't spend the money... you should really look at the Air. It is a fantastic piece of engineering and I am extremely happy with it. I got my Macbook Air (13') for $899 a few years ago. That is pretty comparable to other laptops.
So here are contributing factors:
1. How does software mesh with Windows (pretty well - sometimes better - especially since most things have moved to the browser)
2. What do you need it for (If you need it for gaming or video rendering, Macbook will get progressively more expensive as you move up to Pro's.)
3. Is it worth it (Yes... I bought my Macbook Air because it had a unix base, which made programming much easier... I didn't care about the OS or other things when I bought it... I would say now that I will probably not go back to windows laptops anytime soon.)
I say go to the Apple Store (*shudder*, I hate that store and would only buy my stuff online) and play around with the different versions for a while and see if it something you want.