I'm on a late 2013 which I've only actually paid for a battery replacement on, so I can anecdote believe you.

I'm not in love with macos though and there's more good options nowadays than there was in 2013.

Not at all. Some people, me included, look at hardware and it falls to bits. Really they're not particularly durable machines. Apple could do a lot better.

Thinkpads are ok though. I haven't murdered one of them. Yet. I've tried and failed several times from coffee to catapulting them and they just eat my hamfistedness.

I just bought a replacement iPad for my daughter for the one that we bought in 2013 though. Stuff can last a long time.

Nah, our household has a collection of macs none newer than 2017. My phone and iPad are from 2014 and my gf’s from 2015, and I have a watch 0. They all work fine and, except for the watch and geriatric macs, continue to get software updates.

This will be a good excuse to start a mass upgrade but I won’t be an early adopter.

Or the parent was unlucky - with some faulty production units, and the general case for most people, with hundreds of millions of units sold and the highest customer satisfaction ratings, is not that.