Hmm...maybe. I know several people who have System76 laptops and none of them would say that they're made well. At best they seem to tolerate poor Clevo-rebrand construction out of a desire to support a libre ecosystem. Complaints like needing to reboot to switch between integrated and discrete graphics, low quality screens, extreme fan noise that then interferes heavily with the microphone, and terribly overpromised battery life are the norm. Has something changed very recently?
I have a Sytem76 Oryx as my personal dev machine and a new macbook pro at work. The System76 was much more trouble to setup initially, but has been better in almost every way since then. The Oryx fan can be kind of loud, but the fan on my new macbook is CRAZY loud when it kicks on.
I like the thicker case as well. The mac just feels too flimsy when I'm banging away on the keyboard.
I don't know about older models, but my Lemur Pro laptop (released last summer) has been pretty awesome so far, and their cousins about battery life were spot on.
