Yes. Retina MBP screen pop nearly cost me £450 a few years back. When the option was presented I bought a second hand Lenovo T470 for the same money and sold the broken MacBook Pro as is on ebay and took the kids out for a couple of days with the change.

How did I break the screen? Well I dropped it three inches onto my sofa. Yes that fragile if you get it at the right angle. No thanks!

I've had several thinkpads and nearly beaten them to death basically and they just keep going. I poured an entire cup of coffee in one a couple of years back and fell over with it while running and it had a cracked keyboard footprint which was replaced for £15 from ebay. It still worked fine when I sold it.

Yeah, Apple’s fixation on tight manufacturing tolerances is absolutely nuts with their screens. They give them zero room to warp or bend so they just shatter. It was not fun when I had to manage a fleet of them. With around 200 laptops total we constantly had a stack of 10 rotating in/out of the Apple store for broken screens.

The only thing worse is the fact that the duty cycle on the USB-C ports is so stupidly low. We ended up getting everyone these little port saver things because we got tired of sending laptops in for worn out ports.

Oh dont get me started on USB-C. My T470 has a broken USB-C after my wife tripped over the cable. Fortunately it has an old style thinkpad charger hole. My T495s has two USB-C ports which I'm hoping will last out the lifetime of the device.

All are soldered directly to the motherboard :(

The past 3 phones I owned had to be replaced due to the USB-C port. I my current phone somehow doesn'tlike it and only charges with USB-C if I use a USB-A to USB-C. These are all Pixel phones.

I've had several IBM and Lenovo Thinkpads, and even replaced a motherboard on one, and I agree that they're generally repairable, but the part is going to be $$. It gets better once the laptop is older and parts start showing up on eBay.

Are you comparing an old-style low-def laptop panel against a modern retina one, though? Of course it'll be more expensive to replace and probably require a most specialised part.

Not really. Swapping just the screen out on a Lenovo unit takes about 5 minutes with a screwdriver and spudger. It doesn't matter what screen you put in it really so I don't get this point. If they did a retina one that fits in the hole then it'd work.

I have done this numerous times on older Thinkpads to put 1080p IPS screens in.

On top of that the entire lid assembly is 500% less of a shit show than the MacBooks are (I have repaired several of them as well) for 2mm or so of extra thickness.

> If they did a retina one that fits in the hole then it'd work.

Do they do that?

That's the point. The Apple retina one is non-standard because it's more modern. That's why it's harder to replace. That's why it's more expensive to replace.

> I have done this numerous times on older Thinkpads to put 1080p IPS screens in.

Yes... I'm saying that's the easy one. The hard one is the modern retina MacBook.

Look for 5D10V82348. 14" UHD. Just drops in.

No. A Full HD replacement screen for a last year's Lenovo Thinkpad can be had for as little as $59 on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/BRIGHTFOCAL-Thinkpad-1920x1080-Replac...

> No. A Full HD replacement screen for a last year's Lenovo Thinkpad can be had for as little as $59 on Amazon

What are you saying no to? That's what I said - an old-style low-res Full HD screen is cheap and standard. A modern retina screen is not. That's why they're harder, and so more expensive, to replace.

It's probably this bit:

  old-style low-def

"Old style low-def" sounded more like the common super low-end 1280x768 panels. "Full HD" is at least reasonable, though people used to retina screens might not agree. ;)

Fair enough that the parts will be more costly but why should they be more difficult to replace?

They're non-standard parts so may need non-standard connectors and mountings.