How I would describe a MacBook is "quality". It's not especially durable, it just doesn't break down over time. Other laptops break in stupid ways. The hinges snap because it's metal screwed into plastic. The cheap plastic casings wear down, discolor, and crack as you touch it. The trackpad wears down because it's plastic. The logic boards stress with the constant heat flux and end up breaking. Macs don't often suffer from that.
MacBooks aren't indestructible in any way. They're just built to a higher standard so they can withstand daily use. It's kind of sad that our bar is set so low, but many other laptops can't withstand daily use for years on end. Even Thinkpads, I've had the hinge areas crack because it's metal hinges screwed into a plastic chassis.
I've definitely noticed the same thing. Almost every laptop (and computer, for that matter) has broken down within a year to a year and a half for some random dumb reason. Two of my laptops died due to messed up power supply connections on the motherboard, two others died due to the hinges completely snapping off, and another died because the hard drive failed - and that one was an aluminum iMac that I pawned off to my friend, who replaced the HDD and it works just fine still.
I've had my current MBP since 2012, and it's chugging along just fine - except for the hard drive, which I replaced with an SSD and have no problems with, and ironically enough the hinges, which totally cracked. I had to buy some replacement hinges off of iFixit, which I'm waiting on delivery for today.
Apple computers have by far been the longest lasting and least likely to crap out on me that I've ever had. I'm very happy with my old MBP, and the only reason I'm considering upgrading to a newer model is because I can tell this one might be on its way out in general.
The one thing stopping me is the price point... $1600+, yikes.
Consumer hardware is crap because the market doesn't want to pay for anything above crap. The laptops break after a year because that's how long the warranty is, and the manufacturer is counting on you to come back and buy next year's cheapest model when your laptop breaks.
Go look at enterprise quality PC laptops, they cost as much as a Mac does, but they last just as long.
I can tell you stories of ThinkPads which I have personally seen run over by cars, and while the LCD is broken and the body is a bit scuffed, they still work with an external monitor.
> The one thing stopping me is the price point... $1600+, yikes.
Yup, and if you buy mobile workstations, you're going to pay that much. The great thing about PCs though is that they don't retain their value like a Mac does.
This is why whenever someone asks me for a laptop recommendation, my first pick would be a 2-3 year old enterprise laptop. You can pick them up refurbished for around $300, and they'll easily last you another 3.
The only disadvantage is that companies are afraid to innovate their business laptop line, so in a lot of cases you're stuck with laptops that have a 1366x768 screen while everyone else is running around with a $2000+ extremely fragile ultrabook, which has a 3K display.
Amazingly, only the DVD drive was destroyed. Everything else continued to work.
I've taken my Macbook Pros to Burning Man (and used them while sitting having a drink on Esplanade reprogramming an LED display), and other camping events and have yet to kill one there. Surely at some point I will, but so far so good. But this is just my set of datapoints. My partner's older Macbook Pro just died for apparently no reason at all while using it at home last week, and she treats her much better than I treat mine. No manner of boot key pressing could get it to even bring up anything past the Apple logo.
Just because it would have killed a worse laptop doesn't mean the MacBook is especially durable. I'd say the durability of the MacBook is exactly what you should expect from a laptop, and others are just particularly bad.
Which is awful because basically the most durable mainstream laptop on the market meets my definition of "exactly average".
I agree, things should be a bit better. I'm hoping that some of the IP67 dust/water resistance from phones trickles over to laptops soon.
Oh no. Macbooks do suffer from this! Remember the NVIDIA lead-free-solder fiasco or the issue affecting a boatload of MBPs with Intel GPUs? At least they fixed my Fall 2011 MBP free of charge (logicboard swap). Getting my old Windows laptop fixed with the NV disaster was a whole other story.
I'm still using a circa-2010 Thinkpad W-series (purchased refurbished in 2013). Needs a new cooling module (starting to overheat occasionally), and it's been through a couple battery packs and a keyboard replacement, but those are essentially wear items and it's otherwise still going strong.
So far I've actually stepped right flat on the screen once (it fell out of bed while I was in the bathroom and I couldn't see it under the covers) and I'm going to need to unlearn the habit of picking it up by the screen since other laptops aren't going to tolerate that. The T- and W-series are incredibly, incredibly durable pieces of hardware (note: the new Edge, Yoga, etc series are built much more lightly).
Previously I had a Fujitsu Lifebook T4220 convertible tablet from 2007. That was also very durable. It was built quite lightly but ironically the convertible screen would tend to pivot out of the way when you dropped it, which prevented damage, and since it was so light it tended not to pick up a lot of momentum. One day it just stopped powering up, probably some kind of electrical problem. Happened early 2013, so I got about 5 solid years of daily use from it. I have a broken T4200 I picked up for parts, I've been thinking about trying to troubleshoot it one of these days.
In contrast my fiance had a unibody MacBook Pro (Core2Duo I think, probably circa 2008?) in college and I wasn't nearly as impressed with the design there. The emphasis on passive cooling and having as few fans as possible tended to lead to overheating. What finally killed it was the screen cable going funky (I think). Could probably be replaced, but eh, I'm tired of repasting the damned CPU every 6 months when the overheating dries it out. She has a Thinkpad just like mine now.
I've disassembled more than a couple of laptops, cleaned out the continental-crust-thick wall of dust from the cooling fins, and replaced the thermal paste on the CPU.
See if you can find a disassembly guide for your machine and give it a go, it's fairly straight forward.
On the downside, I got a consumer grade Lenovo, which meant free spyware and a less sturdy chassis than my MBP. Of course it was less than half the price of new similarly equipped Macbook Pro at the time.
It had to be gone long enough that I ended up purchasing a new MBP (I'm a freelance dev and couldn't afford any down time), but it came back a-okay.
I dunno the whys and hows of getting them to do that kind of thing, but I'm still using the computer. Which is way better than the toshibas that I have owned over the years which last about 3-4 years as my daily drivers.
I imagine you got that fixed during the time the recall was active.
I had the same experience with the 2011 model. About 6 months ago the motherboard went, computer is non functional. And yet...I have 13 year old Gateway laptop (first laptop I ever owned), and a 10 year old Dell that both still boot without a hitch. And that Gateway has some miles on it (bought it to play World of Warcraft).
But, as someone else here said, the "quality" difference between the Apple and PC products is immense.
The switching or the poorer screen of the air?
Most of the "savings" for me over that period came in terms of reduced hassle and bother. OS X proved reliable and low-maintenance, minimizing the amount of time I had to spend playing IT man. And, unlike Windows, it didn't fuck up over time, even proving resilient to upgrades (I did every step from Leopard to Mavericks), so the regular reinstalls that I was used to doing weren't necessary. (And, unlike Windows, it had a decent backup tool supplied, so when I bought an SSD, which was the closest I got to needing to do a reinstall, I had to do little more than leaving it running overnight, unattended, once.)
Of course, things progress, and Windows vs OS X is moving closer to parity... thanks to efforts from both companies. But I replaced my soaked Macbook Pro with a new one anyway, on the basis of my experience - it certainly wasn't the sticker price, that's for sure - and it's working out OK for now.
Also, a couple years ago updating to a specific version of OS X while LaTeX was installed caused the update process to freeze indefinitely, forcing you to reinstall everything. I had everything backed up, but it was a pain and could have easily caused me to lose important stuff if I was just a little bit lazier.
Still, everything runs smooth and great. Actually noticeably better than the 2015 hp ZBook I use for work.
Thanks but no thanks, I'll stick to my trustworthy Fall 2011 MBP.
You're very lucky you don't have an early 2011 MBP. Infamously untrustworthy. If I had waited a few months to get your model or the 2012 model, I'd probably still be a Mac user.
A friend of mine who had two of the same model also had the same GPU overheating issues.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/petition-demands-apple-fi...
I have one. Still works great.
-edit 13" models did not have this issue
Which would cost way more than $300 and presumably right before it failed it was working fine for them.
I've opened up my MBA 2013. It's basically a large battery, smallish logic board, speakers and CPU fan.