I have an ancient mid-2009 MacBook. I walked out the Apple retailer and straight into a cut-price PC parts shop and upgraded the ram and hard drive to avoid some Apple tax. I am probably overdue to replace my second battery but I haven't been travelling much for awhile. My second or third HDD was swapped for an SSD quite some time ago.
It wouldn't be fast enough for some jobs but as long as I have browser and terminal I cope ok. I have been going to replace it for years but Apple keep on making more and more unserviceable hardware.
I am a very satisfied Apple customer who will never buy another Apple product. When this machine dies I will buy a quality laptop that isn't disposable and run Linux again.