i agree with some of this. i have a few macbooks in the house, one that was purchased in 2007 or 2008 had various hardware problems. screen failures, the keyboard, hard drive failed. i took it to the apple store each time and they fixed it in a couple of days with no question, even the second screen failure after it was out of warranty, when i explained it had previously failed in the same way. but still, it’s disappointing.
i have another from 2008 that hasn’t had any problems at all and still works and gets a bit of use.
the one i mostly use is from 2012 and it runs better now than it did when i bought it after putting a solid state drive in it a few months ago.
i also had a grey g4 tower that i bough round about 2000 which is still being used for graphic design stuff by the guy i sold it to and still runs surprisingly well after 20 years. it’s never needed any repairs other than upgrading memory.
i think there have been shit batches of products since they became so massive that they haven’t always dealt with very well (although sometimes they seem to do), which is definitely a major slip for them, their customer service used to be excellent. and i think it is still comparatively good.
but there are other factors. my wife’s pc laptop is about the same age as mine and has higher spec components yet the operating system is a bloated mess. it’s a useless pile of shit. it ties itself in knots trying to start up and can’t shut down properly. the same happens periodically to the various relatively new laptops we have in the office and we need to get the it guy out to sort them out. apple are far better in the sense that you can buy a computer and never really have to do any maintenance, not need to bother with anti virus or any of that stuff and ten years later it will still be very useable. i’ve not had the same experience with windows computers (wife’s laptop, equipment at work) at all.
as for phones and tablets, i just prefer the interface. can’t deal with android personally, although there are some decent android phones.
but anyway, fuck them.