In fact you hit the nail on the head. A laptop for Photoshop needs to have at least 16 gb ram, and two hard drives - so that $2000 price is pretty optimistic. And a 13" retina display will have system text prompts that are so small that it can cause eyestrain after a little while of constant use. The MBP is a nice machine but to properly outfit it for optimal performance with Photoshop, it can get expensive, more than it needs to be.
For that same $2000 (or less) you can get a computer with 2 internal drives - one SSD for software and system, and a 1Tb 7200 rpm drive for data (picture) storage. The resolution will be ideal for editing, and you have a choice of 13, 15 or 17 inch displays.
The reality it that the retina display is less impressive in gamut-hungry applications like Photoshop. Put simply, it does not have the color gamut to properly display color images for editing. There are better choices out there, if you look at the right criteria - but like yourself, the Retina does look impressive because of the detail and resolution. It just doesn't display enough colors.
You might find this article informative:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1432348The laptops I have been recommending are the ones mentioned in the article as having excellent color gamut - the Clevo/Sager 15" laptops.
which you can find here:
http://www.xoticpc.com/custom-gaming-laptops-notebooks-clevo-sager-notebooks-ct-95_51_162.htmlI have a number of students that have purchased a system based on the SAGER NP8268 which starts at just under $1200, but can be user-expanded to 32 gb, so it has some future-proofing.
Their warranty and extended warranties are quite good, and also less costly than Apple's comparable products. It is a good alternative to Dell's Alienware machines, and a favorite among gamers.
At the end of the day, once you are in your applications, the OS is pretty much in the background, and it really doesn't matter which one you use. Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 are just as stable as Mac OS, and given some of the issues that arise when Apple updates it's OS and applications run into compatibility issues, I would say that the stability goes to the PC platform.
I have quite a few students with Apple products, and the rest have Windows, and some have both. I don't see much of a meaningful difference between them in use - either from a functional or reliability perspective. Buying the cheapest PC and comparing it to a premium priced product like an Apple, is silly, but often Apple converts will make that comparison. They leave out the price when they make the comparison. Best to compare apples to, well, apples (premium PCs). Select the Apple as you need it configured, and then get a Premium quality PC and configure it the same way, and you will see the differences.
These days, PCs crash just as often as Macs - which is not all that often.
In fact you hit the nail on the head. A laptop for... (