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Comment by zerohm | Hacker News Reader

This. The computer that by far gets the most use in my house is a 2009 Mac Book Pro. I've upgraded the hard drive to an SSD so it's still quite snappy. The monitor is still bright and colorful. All the keyboard keys still have good action. The mouse pad physical click is the only thing that has fizzled out and I could fix that for $100.

So yeah, it doesn't look great when Apple says "replace your 5 year old computer" but as a whole, they do a great job of making products that last. Also, news flash, they are in the business of making money.

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They used to. Retina Macbooks? Zero upgrade path. Can't even replace the batteries in them without risking your life. And eventually Apple stop providing battery replacements, and your machine is dead.

My PC, however, has components that are oh, 10 years old? Sure, it has a 1-year old motherboard, CPU, 3 year old RAM, a 2 year old GPU, and a mix of SSDs and HDDs, but the case I bought in 2006, as with my MX518 mouse.

This kind of longevity of components is good for us. Throwing out your appliance every 5 years because Apple decided to solder RAM instead of sacrifice 1mm of thinness and provide a slot is good for Apple, and Apple alone.

Most likely you can fix the trackpad click quite easily yourself. There are some annoying 3-wing screws holding the battery but besides that there isn't much in the way.

There's one single screw that sets the trackpad's click sensitivity. I loosened the click even during the warranty period because it was too strong (and loud) for my taste. A tiny bit of rotation and ideally loctite to fix it.

Check to see if the battery is swollen -- that happened a lot with those machines, and typically interfered with the trackpad click.

Yup, had this with my 2006 MacBook, and a new battery fixed it.

(Incidentally, when I last went to buy a replacement battery from an Apple Store, they wouldn't let me install it myself even though the polycarbonate MacBooks had user replaceable batteries. They insisted I bring in my MacBook and leave it with them overnight to have a Genius install it. I ended up cancelling it and getting a NewerTech battery replacement, which is both cheaper & has better battery life than the Apple model.)

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