Having never owned a Mac, and only rarely used them, I had no frame of reference for many of the claims. The pictures were incontrovertible though. The camera is horrible. What really is the marginal cost of upgrading to whatever camera they use in a modern iPhone?
I'm typing this on a Surface Laptop 2 (and have a 2016 MacBook Pro), and the cover is nowhere as thick as a phone.
It's not sharp enough to cut bread, but those 2-3mm of thickness have zero impact on perceived laptop thinness while affording enough room for a spectacular webcam (by current Apple standards) and its companion Windows Hello counterpart.