I don’t have a Mac, and I think they should be more repairable, but I still think they’re ahead of most the rest.
Many people with the overheating 2011 MBPs did.
Even within my very small social circle, I knew of three 2011 15" MBPs (including my own). Of those 3, all of them had to get the recall service, and since then, 2 of those MBPs have become bricks/e-waste.
I've gone through a lot of laptops (PC and Mac, my first was a Powerbook 170), and the only one to ever crap out on me was that 2011 MBP.
When it was working, it was one of the best laptops I ever had. When it had issues, I felt like Apple couldn't care less about the issue. It's pretty well documented that Apple pretended the problem didn't exist for quite some time.
The first logic board replacement (during AppleCare) had the exact same defect as the original board. It displayed the same symptoms within a couple of months, and then it totally crapped out right after AppleCare ended, and there was no way I was going to pay $500+ CAD to replace the logic board with yet another defective board.
I was lucky that the recall was announced before I recycled it (I ended up having to buy a new laptop in the meantime). The recall board has since died as well. The saddest thing is that computer (quad core i7 with 16gb ram) would still be more than usable today if it still worked.
I was completely locked into the Apple ecosystem prior to my 2011 MBP experience. And while I realize that the 2011 MBP is an outlier in terms of Apple product quality, the experience pretty much guaranteed that I'll never buy an Apple product again. There were so many ways they could have made me whole, but instead, they just kept providing a fix to a design defect with another defective part.
I used to have Macbooks, I upgraded them with new disks and memory. Today that would not have been possible which is one big reason I would never buy a macbook to begin with.
This behavior is bad for all consumers of their products and should not be defended with anecdotal stuff like "people don't throw away their macbooks" which is easily refuted by going to a garbage site.
Anecdotally (which is all your point boils down to) I know that businesses rarely upgrade machines. Home users rarely do either. Gamers and enthusiasts are the people that tend repair or upgrade. These people are a vanishingly small number. I have no problem with Apple, or anyone else, replacing broken or damaged items with new/refurbished ones, so long as they are responsible with the disposal or reuse of the damaged article. Apple demonstrably are.
Apple offer free recycling[0] and it’s available in most countries, if not all. It is reasonably well publicised and easily searchable. If an individual chooses to dispose of a device in an inappropriate way, that’s on them, not the manufacturer of the device.
> I’ve never known anyone to throw away a Mac
I'm just telling you that there are people who do that. What are your sources for that business don't upgrade machines? In my experience, business are often the kind of places that actually do upgrade their machines but of course not if it is macs since they cannot be upgraded.
I have never said anything negative about their recycling program. But it still is more resource heavy and more polluting than simply continued use of a product when you upgrade parts.
This seems like its explicitly your problem given that apple will take and recycle your old macbooks for free if they are worthless and if they arent they will take them for a credit.