I bought the first Zenbook UX31 when it came out and last year bought a retina MBP.
The zenbook was at the time half the price for the comparable mac air and I enjoyed it very much the first year, but since then I had it repaired 3 times costing me more than the purchase price (HDD, ram, power plug) and the power plug still doesnt work well so I can't use it anymore. It served me well, but not sure I would recommend it again.
I'm very happy with the MPB so far, never thought I'd buy a mac but there was just no alternative for build quality, as the article suggested. Still haven't put Linux on it, which I thought I'd do immediately, so the OS is not that bad. If the MPB were a little lighter, it would be the perfect machine for me.
I think it's not only about build quality. If you use Linux, sadly it's also about compatibility.
I bought a MBA 11' (2012) because it's an all-Intel machine, which was used by Linus for some time and hardware support is almost perfect. It's only lacking ACPI events for battery discharge, something very few machines have.
While Macs are good, I think they are optimised for the looks and not for robustness. Glossy screens are a bit uncomfortable, and aluminium tends to be too rigid, transmitting shocks to the screen as a consequence.
I had a Thinkpad T440s running Ubuntu and then Arch, and now I have a 13" rMBP. I love the glossy screen, vivid colors, and most importantly, battery life. OS X also has the advantage of everything just working perfectly out of the box so I'm happy.
I don't think I'll go back to Linux any time soon, though I do miss tiling WMs.
