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> How I would describe a MacBook is "quality". It's not especially durable, it just doesn't break down over time.

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.

> 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.

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.

Some time ago, a coworker of mine was in a terrible car rollover accident. He escaped without long lasting injuries, but the car was totaled. His Macbook Pro was loose in the car and it got bent in the middle.

Amazingly, only the DVD drive was destroyed. Everything else continued to work.

The Dell Precisions that are just rebranded Dell XPS laptops. They're nice at first but get annoying after a while. That said, the 5510 feels a heck of a lot more durable than the m3800 I used to have.

Flip side of the coin here, My personal HP laptop was bought on special as Windows 8 was just coming to market and the store wanted to get the older stuff with Win7 off the shelves. That would put it around late 2012, so almost 4 years old. I was getting fed up with the Win 10 upgrade and decided it was time to go full time Linux, I replaced the old drive with a SSD, not because the drive failed but because I wanted to, plus as a safety net I could always put the Windows drive back in. Sure I'd like to buy a new laptop, and am leaning toward System76, but as long as the one I have is still working I can't really justify it.

Anything pushed hard enough can be destroyed. I find the newer Macs to be pretty good partially from their light weight. I literally throw my 13" MBP around the apartment (toss it onto the couch, bed, etc) which I'd never have imagined doing with 10 pound laptops of yesteryear.

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.

But going camping with your laptop shouldn't kill it. Dropping it off a cliff should (and would even with a MacBook).

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 think moving to fewer moving parts helps for some things. I no longer worry about magnets, hard drive heads, removable media, or even fans on some machines. So it feels overall that things are getting better, but I've been on Apple hardware for 15 years now.

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.

> The logic boards stress with the constant heat flux and end up breaking.

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.

And more recently the spring 2011 MBPs with bad AMD GPUs, and that experience soured me on Macs about a decade after switching back to Mac.

Which is extremely rare. On cheap-ass Windows laptops, it's expected.

The first few months I owned this MBA, I was still getting used to having a computer so thin and small. One day as I was packing up, I closed the computer and tossed it into the air, setting it rotating on its axis, as one might do with a notebook or folder. Immediately shocked by what I had done, I froze and watched it rise into the air and then fall. In full rotation, one of its corners impacted my Ikea desk. The desk had a 3/4" wedged dent. The MBA went on to work for another five years before the above-mentioned failure.

Why not ever airborne, mine has been trodden on. The lack of a glass screen is very helpful. Fantastic machine. My only wish is that the power button wasn't by a useful key.

I really really hope that Tesla does to the automotive market what Apple did to the laptop market when it introduced the unibody (ALU) Macbook design. It's a design that has withstood the test of time.