That caps lock light is so cool, but I guess it makes sense since keyboard drivers need to change it.

A great form factor with a superior OS (IMHO).

It could well be survivorship bias, but I did represent the examples as personal. Having said that - I did a quick google for « laptops with longest lifespan » and most of the reviews had apple at #1 or 2.

In common with you, most of my previous laptops (5 or 6) were thinkpads like yours, usually the tablet style for OneNote (which is awesome BTW). They never survived the rigours of the road. Perhaps that’s why I had a different result to yours - I used to travel 3-6 months a year.

They sure do, and its a complete bastard. Soldered ram and disk.

My latest laptop has 96GB RAM (I run a lot of VMs) and 4TB SSD. I think I should get the full 5 years out of it.

That was an awesome laptop with upgradable components. Nice!

IIRC weren’t some of the peripheral drivers a bit dodgy.

Sad, but true. If a CEO is not maximising profit, then the shareholders can sue, and the board (who represent the shareholders) can replace the CEO.

I wish this structure had a longer term view so that a CEO can also do what’s right - such as make decisions that might lose money now, but have a greater long term value (where value is not only defined by share price, but also things like goodwill, reputation etc).

Repairability has just never been a high priority for them (which is bad). But it is becoming so, thanks to various governments forcing the issue.

I’m an old Linux-head (actually started out developing tools for 10’s of variants of unix - compilation flags providing custom versions). I would love to have my mac mini running linux though, that would be awesome. I don’t think you can yet.

I think their engineering is pretty good, personally. I travelled a lot with a laptop from 2000 to about 2020, and my windows laptops would always die after 2 years - hinges, cracks in the body, screen cracks and so on. Moving to apple’s laptops in about 2011 meant I got 5 years out of each (air then a pro). I’m now on a second pro, but the old pro is still trucking along.

I’m not going to defend all their decisions, there’s a lot of questionable stuff in there (keyboards, sticking to lightening, mice…). But their hardware, both laptop, mini and pro) has been solid.

You are right about repairability. I think that has never been a key feature for them hence the glue, security screws and other crap. Fortunately there are governments around the world that are pushing for repairability, consistency with usb-c, replaceable batteries and more. So I think all manufacturers will be upping their game now, which is awesome.

All manufacturers reduce cost - supply chain management and manufacturability are the processes to drive that. Apple are really good at the supply chain side, that was Tim Cook’s focus as COO. What I don’t like is that they are able to keep their incredibly high margins (far higher than any other manufacturer) thanks to their software, interoperability and walled garden.

I have a lot of apple kit - I appreciate their over-engineered approach to a lot of hardware, and I like their approach to privacy.

But they do make mistakes in design - the puck, the aerials, butterfly keyboards, unrepairability of design…

And one thing I really hate is their response to those errors. Its almost always to blame the user. I just wish they would be honest.

And the puck mouse.