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Comment by kevingadd | Hacker News Reader

In the long run, though, it will be hard to repair and the parts generally aren't swappable or upgradeable. When Apple was a participant in the PC ecosystem you had more options for repairs and upgrades. So 5 years down the road people's feelings on the M1 may change, even if they're amazing machines now.

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> 5 years down the road people's feelings on the M1 may change, even if they're amazing machines now

I'm 3 years in and have never needed servicing. If I do, I'm fine having to go back to Apple. It's not a good fit for everyone. But it is for my niche. (Also, Apple stand out in having long first-party support runways for their products.)

There is no long run in laptops. Ten years is already ancient, and there are lots of ten-year-old laptops still running.

Right, but if you want to keep it running, you probably need to replace the battery and may need to replace failing storage. I have an 8 year old laptop that still works but the battery is in terrible shape, and it's not an easy one to repair so it's not realistic to fix it. The machine otherwise is fit for purpose so it's a real waste.

Few people were repairing their Intel MacBooks, even if they were more serviceable. It's not really typical of Apple users to expect to have to open their devices (me included, and I've been using MacBooks since the PPC days)

It's not bad to want to pull apart and service your own laptop, but for me it's a tool to get a job done and if it breaks I'll send it to Apple to fix

My previous Intel Retina MBP lasted from 2012 to 2020, and now my dad uses it because it still works fine. My younger brother uses my ~2008 17" MacBook Pro (it only runs on wall power, though). Repairability has just never been much of a concern in my use of Apple stuff

My main device is Apple Intel from 2009. It’s taken a few repairs that are not possible today to keep it running to modern standards.

The 2013 Macbook pro 13" has been my longest running laptop for work, and swapped it for the M1 two years ago because of the reviews. One of my kids is still using it for school.

I never had a laptop for that long before. And just had to replace the battery once, by an after market one. The keys on the keyboard disappearing is the only notable aging symptom.

Maybe an outlier, but based on that, I'm confident the M1 may last long too.

Speaking as someone in tech, honestly I don’t care what happens to it in 5 years. It will be outdone by then by much better models and I’ll be upgrading, because $3k every three years for a device that I use everyday is pittance.

a valid strategy for sure.

otoh i hope to be burried with my m1 airbook (for home use) -- i hope never to buy another notebook class device, and just keep replacing the battery every 5 yrs.

It's an amazing machine, to be sure (I'm typing to you from one), but it's going to be so far behind in another 5-10 years. Its 8-16 GiB of RAM is already dwarfed by the 64 GiB options that Apple is selling today and the M1's speed just isn't going to be competitive to keep up with apps' demands in 2033. I do really like mine though. There's an X61 Thinkpad I felt the same way about that I still miss. Hm maybe I should dig that out of storage.

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