My experiences different, I'd still be rocking a 2014 MBP had it not suffered massive liquid damage. All Macs and MacBooks I or relatives have crossed or are going to cross the decade threshold with aplomb.
I too own a couple of 10+ years old Mac laptops.
They are perfect as doorstop.
Once the RAM is soldiered or one of the main components gets out of production it's all about luck
while it is simply a matter of repairing it or upgrading it in the case of an actually repairable "plastic" one.
8GB of RAM is plenty fine for me. I just don't have a thousand tabs opened (I never do anyway, whatever the RAM amount), which is mostly the usual problem but the state of the web platform and its runaway resource usage is another debate entirely.
> one of the main components gets out of production it's all about luck
You make it sound like it never happens with non-Apple hardware. With the flurry of devices that are put out every other month by a lot of hardware vendors, "out of production" often means a couple years, barely enough to cover warranty claims, and then they coast on stocked spare parts.
I am in the habit of trying to revive legacy hardware when people throw it away, and have a closet full of hardware barely older than 2-3 years that could not be repaired because of a broken part that should have been perfectly repairable were the part be available. Usually these get fixed by having two broken machines and doing a transplant, not by sourcing original parts from manufacturers. Batteries are loads of fun, even just one year after a product release it might be impossible to source an original one, either because they have additional import legislation so they're outright not distributed overseas, or because they're deemed consumables when they're field-swappable, and thus often not covered by warranties (and thus vendors don't make any effort stocking them), so you're left with buying third-party ones of obscure origins which can be either duds or fire hazards waiting to happen with a non-negligible probability. At least Apple puts forward some hard numbers so I know what I can rely on†.
Hell, just last year I restored a PoS system that had 1GB of RAM and a 8GB SSD, put some lightweight Linux on it, recovered a couple of ESC/POS thermal printers, hacked some bridge in Ruby between the PoS software and the printers, and the device chugged along for a solid year before finally giving up for good, which saved the store owner from shelling out stupid amounts of money and helped them bootstrap their business.
With hundreds of machines from various vendors that went through my hands I feel I have enough statistically significant data to extract trends and draw my own conclusions. These don't support that Apple devices become e-waste in short order, but I respect that your experience and opinion might be different, even though I don't adhere to it.
Great example. macOS Monterey minimum requirements: "MacBook Pro: Early 2015 and newer"
So Apple forces that device to be e-trash, regardless of your desires.
Uhh, nope. NVidia and Broadcom all over.
00:00.0 Host bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Host Bridge (rev b1)
00:00.1 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Memory Controller (rev b1)
00:03.0 ISA bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 LPC Bridge (rev b3)
00:03.1 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Memory Controller (rev b1)
00:03.2 SMBus: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 SMBus (rev b1)
00:03.3 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Memory Controller (rev b1)
00:03.4 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Memory Controller (rev b1)
00:03.5 Co-processor: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Co-processor (rev b1)
00:04.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b1)
00:04.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev b1)
00:06.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b1)
00:06.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev b1)
00:08.0 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 High Definition Audio (rev b1)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 PCI Bridge (rev b1)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Ethernet (rev b1)
00:0b.0 SATA controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 AHCI Controller (rev b1)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 PCI Express Bridge (rev b1)
00:15.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 PCI Express Bridge (rev b1)
00:16.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 PCI Express Bridge (rev b1)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV730/M96-XT [Mobility Radeon HD 4670]
02:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV710/730 HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 4000 series]
03:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
04:00.0 PCI bridge: Texas Instruments XIO2213A/B/XIO2221 PCI Express to PCI Bridge [Cheetah Express] (rev 01)
05:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments XIO2213A/B/XIO2221 IEEE-1394b OHCI Controller [Cheetah Express] (rev 01)
This is a 'Late 2009 27" iMac', running the internal display as well as an external 1920*1200 24" monitor through a DP->HDMI cable. Everything works, including the silly IR remote control thingy (tested using the IR blaster on my phone).
When they go out of security support these machines work quite well under Linux (as I could test myself, I recycled a bunch already).