also macs were very early to hop on the ssd train and that was an insane advantage over most windows machines. I think that gap has closed substantially at this point.
I have no doubt that Windows laptop build quality has improved in the last decade, in no small part to chasing after Apple, but at this point I can't imagine going back to Windows so I'll never really know.
If anything, the repairability and upgradability that prevented old Macs from being e-waste is gone now. It's hard to imagine Apple pushing the envelope on reusability or device longevity in their current era.
Maybe it's different now (I haven't used Windows in decades, so I don't know) but I will say that it never felt that way to me. Perhaps because Apple controls the OS and the hardware, and has the ability to either spend extra time optimizing for older known hardware that falls within a support window or to delay a feature that would be problematic for older-but-supported hardware, but my lived experience with Apple hardware is that I get a lot more practical longevity out of it without having to work to squeeze every last drop of performance out of it.
Yes, I can always take a $1200 Windows machine and put XFCE or Xubuntu or Mate on it and it'll extend its life considerably, but as someone who has always tried to extend the life of my components as long as possible (the server at my feet is an Athlon FX) -- it's always just felt easier on Apple hardware.
It's even easier still with non-Windows PC operating systems, but ... has Windows gotten better on this regard or is that longevity still bolstered by migrating away from Windows?
I don't think they spend any real time optimizing for old hardware, for example APFS is just a turd on HDD systems and yet they forced everyone on it and worse yet kept selling HDD iMacs on the low end (which really wasn't that low).
Meanwhile MS announces in advance what the support window will be. With Windows 10 there was barely any difference in requirements from Windows 8 so pretty much everything that wasn't a bottom tier netbook or tablet from 2010 still works fine and is supported until 2025. Meanwhile the 2013 Mac Pro which was an expensive beast and sold until late 2019 won't even get some security updates in 2025.
Linux and the BSDs also announce ahead of time the support period and there's a plethora of options for aging hardware.
Nearly all machines, DIY included, would have met these requirements. Intel PTT has been built into their processors since 2013. AMD for at least a few years.
Hardware as high quality as Apple is harder to come by though, and generally commands the same price premium.
I'm currently using a Dell XPS laptop that will turn 12 years old in a few months. Since I bought it, I've been able to
1. Replace the AC adapter and battery multiple times (the most common failure point for this model).
2. Upgrade the screen (yes, really!) to a wide color gamut model that can do photo editing in the AdobeRGB space. (New Macs have good screens, but not so long ago even the MBP only had an sRGB screen).
3. Add an SSD.
4. Upgrade the memory (supports up to 32 GB).
5. Upgrade the WiFi adapter card to a new model that supports WiFi 5 (née AC), getting me much faster wireless without having to buy a new laptop.
And ... a bunch of other stuff. All this has cost me less money, in total, than a brand new bottom-of-the-line Dell model would have cost me at any point in the last 12 years. The point being, if you're going to replace your device after 4 years anyway, may as well get a Macbook Air at this point (especially with the M1/M2 chip). But I've been delighted by the longevity of my old Dell.
Ignore 'build quality' that is marketing nonsense that companies use to exploit you.
Last year I picked up a computer with these requirements for $550. Its been flawless.
If I was going to spend another $700, I'd either get 2, or upgrade my video card.
I've worked at orgs that used a variety of expensive windows laptops, because they kept having abysmal failure rates and switching every year.
They already had stacks of failed Surface Books and ASUS Zenbooks.
Maybe my HP Elitebook would have lasted, but it was terrible to use the whole time.
Not that my Mac experience has been flawless, but the odds seem to be far better.
Come on...can we tone down the ridiculous statements here, please?
I don't know what your friends did to this hardware, but there isn't anything out there you HAVE to replace "almost yearly". Not even for that price.
Other people have noted that shelling out the same for Windows hardware might get you better quality, but there's also the possibility that people who spend that much don't want to shell that out again so they take better care of their stuff.
That was also true for older macs, which were cheaper.
I believe that the Apple Silicon macs are the highest-margin macs Apple has ever made, since they no longer have to pay Intel for the CPUs or AMD for the GPUs.
I can see no technical or logistical reason why Apple had to increase prices, and believe it is entirely driven by the idea that the market can bear it.
That doesn't sound right. The m series chips are literally copy pasted from their a series and they operate at a scale where they probably get nice economies of scale. I bet they increased their margins a substancial amount.
I am not convinced. Most of the development cost for Apple Silicon is already covered by the iphone and ipad. They always had to pay for manufacturing and logistics so that's not a new thing, and I bet they paid AMD and Intel way more than they pay TSMC even now.
17 or so year old IBM T41 stopped working about 2 years ago.
It's still getting new MacOS releases/updates using OpenCore Legacy Patcher [1]. Once MacOS is ARM only will put Linux or OpenBSD on it and see how long it goes.
Replacing old batteries is sometimes extremely affordable if you're willing to open the machine yourself.
I downvoted you because you're too worried about your downvotes and seem to base your opinion an what you think other people will like to hear, and then called those who don't agree with you and downvoted you, that they must have an anti apple bias.
You should always speak your mind free regardless of other people's upvotes or downvotes, and not start to generalize and beret those who don't agree with you by telling them they must have some bias.
OTOH, literally every Mac owner I know has had to replace their Mac laptop multiple times due to various hardware issues. (And yes, that includes Macbook Pros, Airs, etc.)
It's great that Apple has such good support. I couldn't tell you what Dell or IBM's support is like; I've never had to use it.
My ASUS G73 is 12 years old. I stuffed it with 32GB RAM and it works just fine. I use it to create 3D models and assemblies. I do clone the SSD once in a while but still there was no need to replace.
Since I use it mostly as a portable desktop (external keyboard, mouse and 4K monitor) the relevant parts are pristine.
Well, nothing went wrong with all the computers I've ever had, but that's just an anecdotal measure of reliability, not of sustainability.
Very weird logic.
Then they recalled the 2012 MBAs because of failing SSDs in October 2013 and refused to refund my Apple care because they did me a "favour" and I got a good "deal" with getting Apple care because I shouldn't have been able to buy it post-warranty. It didn't matter that they recalled the SSD literally 2 months later free of charge, they wouldn't let me get rid of the Apple care and have it refunded.
In April 2016 the battery died on me and it was out of Apple care warranty because the Apple care was June 2012 - June 2015 instead of the August 2013 I purchased it on and being valid until August 2016. So that cost me another $250 to replace. Another repair I had to pay for that should have been free.
Finally in 2019 I updated to Catalina and it hosed the entire laptop which was working flawlessly before the update. It started randomly beach balling after about an hour of use and would stutter every couple of minutes until it eventually would lock up and turn off completely. Then it would randomly show the flashing question mark when booting up and it stopped working completely. The laptop couldn't even factory restore itself or stay on long enough to be restored over the internet. I brought it to Apple a few times, they didn't detect anything wrong with the laptop, and I eventually gave up on it. I still have no clue what that update did to kill my entire laptop but I was done putting money into it at that point.
I'd guess that the compounding exceptions of your situtation (paying for AppleCare in liu of paying for a repair, then that repair being being of a service program) were sufficiently illegible to Apple that you didn't (couldn't?) get a refund.
It really annoys me that the laptop died for no reason overnight after an OS upgrade and Apple couldn't even come up with an explanation or attempt to fix it. I've done some Googling recently because this was in my mind again and apparently Catalina bricked a lot of laptops but I can't seem to find any acknowledgment from Apple on that.
> I am surprised I am getting downvoted
> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time.
> You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product.
- 2013 MB (Glorious, ran forever, needed more RAM and speed)
- 2016 MBP (bad keyboard, then rapid battery expansion)
- 2018 MBP (battery expansion, then logic board failure)
- 2019/2020 MBP (logic board failure)
- M1 MBP 13" (nothing, it's running beautifully.)
IIRC, all of the above failures happened just outside of the warranty period. For personal MacBooks, I will no longer go without AppleCare+. The risk of failure and accidental damage is too great.
We have an org with thousands of MBPs with similar experiences. It got bad enough that discussions were had about switching staff to Chromebooks or Windows laptops. (Chromebooks didn't meet requirements and Windows laptops are even worse for hardware and software reasons)
All of these devices basically sat on a desk in a ~68F office most of the time.
2016-2020 the dark ages but outside of that 4 year period (that Apple has firmly reversed course on), Apple's reputation for excellent laptops is well deserved.
Baking on the memory? It's frustrating and gimps the device lifespan, but arguably unavoidable with the bandwidth Apple is targeting. Without replaceable storage though, every Apple Silicon device is effectively a ticking time-bomb. These devices will all hit their TBW limit long before they're unusable, and Apple refused to anticipate this because... it side-steps their pricing scheme?
The current Macbook lineup is a step in the right direction, but far from perfect. Even ignoring my hundred gripes with MacOS, I think there are clear hardware improvements they can make with future iterations. None of these improvements seem particularly profitable though, so I'm not counting on Apple adding them.
However, Apple’s base model is frankly silly. A solid 2TB NVME drive is only 150$, slapping the equivalent of 20$ worth of storage on a 1,500$ laptop is crazy.
The point of the parent comment was not about saving data from the drive, but that the devices are landfill material once they hit tbw limits on their drives, even if they were otherwise in good condition.
> So if the internal drive on your M1 Mac fails completely, even an external bootable drive won't boot. Yep, your Mac is bricked.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-bad-is-the-m1-macs-ssd-fai...
Constant backups are a necessity even if your computer has RAID-6 storage built on enterprise-grade storage.
Your office can catch fire. You can be hit by ransomware. Multiple devices in the array can fail in rapid sequence (happened to me once). Your computer can get stolen (happened to me, twice).
Have an offsite backup always on hand.
A failure != a brand new laptop, especially with applecare.
IMO chromebooks are worse but cheaper so you feel better just tossing them out. Windows laptops are worse .. so your position is Apple sux bucause the laptops fai sometimes. But window laptops fail more ... so ...
so what? Hardware fails sometimes, Apple has great support and actually own up to defective products. Sure I'm a little miffed that I can't generally fix them myself (and especially miffed that they solder storage onto a mainboard and don't use something like m.2). But every last apple laptop i've owned that I have replaced for speed reasons has gone to someone else who's used it for years after i've been done with it. (Well save one that took an unfortunate tumble into a lake.. no saving that one, RIP last macbook I ever owned with an optical drive)
Apple does not have support good enough for professionals, my colleagues are suffering with defective MacBooks until they can justify a full replacement, because Apple repairs cost a lot of time, while Lenovo sends a repairperson with tools and replacement parts to my office.
On the other hand, an Apple store once took over 3 weeks to order a replacement battery for my macbook air. I never even received an explanation for this incredible incompetence. And when I finally got the battery, the apple store employee made sure to add insult to injury by criticizing my android phone...
It's night and day. My take is that Dell has something to prove while Apple rests on their laurels.
It handles it just fine at 8-10% CPU usage on an M1.
This one is pricier but also doubles as a docking station/100w PD:
https://www.kensington.com/p/products/device-docking-connect...
They have some cheaper, more basic models too.
edit: for the record I think this limit is stupid and the biggest flaw of the Air. You're right that other than that, it's a damn near perfect daily driver.
I just took it for-granted that every laptop in this price range on sale today will by and large be able to drive two external displays, but nope!
I ended up using a "double wide"/32:9 style monitor - the Samsung CRG9 - these 32:9 panels can be had in 5120 x 1440 resolution, which is exactly the size and res of two 27 inch 1440p panels side by side but in a single display. Works great on the Air, although its not a super cheap option.
> https://www.samsung.com/ca/monitors/gaming/super-ultra-wide-...
This limitation is purely artificial/for market segmentation purposes.
It's still for market segmentation but there is a hardware reason.
I don't know anyone who went "Ah! only one monitor support!? I better move up the range to get that 2nd display support..." etc. You would really need to get into the weeds on the spec sheets to notice ahead of purchase.
I actually find many more people doing the opposite - choosing to move "down range" to the Air for the form factor, given it still has a great CPU. These power users who choose based on the great form factor get hurt the worst on this.
A replacement display is basically 70+% the cost of the entire machine.
AppleCare had to replace two of them on my Sandy Bridge MacBook Air. They blamed the bag I kept it in(when replacing it the second time), but they also sold me the bag.
That's the problem. You need to discharge the battery once in a while or it builds up gas and expands. I had a 2015 that was perfect until I stopped going anywhere in March 2020. So I basically didn't unplug it for a year, and then the battery got explodey.
So now that I still work at home, I make sure to unplug my laptop once in a while just to drain it down a bit.
That's still a defect; the laptop battery management should do that for you. As an example, the Dell laptops I'm used to automatically drain the battery to ~95% when plugged in all the time (it appears to be at 100% while on AC, but when you unplug it you can see the true charge).
They are, though.
I'm on my 4th MacBook and all have lasted me at least 5 years. The reason I upgrade them is to get more speed/specs, not because they stopped working, I even sold them and made back some small $$.
PS The touchbar thing was nonsense, I didn't jump on that, as well as other gimmicks. Still the MBP is a solid option.
I use my MBP 6-8 hours every. single. day. I plug two monitors to it and leave everything on 24/7 (I only dim the screen but never close it). I'm sure I put way more use into them than the average user. I once went close to two years without a restart.
No other laptop I've owned has been as reliable as the MBPs.
... but yes this is still an anecdote.
Of course not. An anecdote is bad data. A diverse sample is good data.
You: sample size = 1
Maybe parents opinion is coloured negatively by hearing about failing machines of colleagues. They even said that Windows machines were worse.
Maybe you have been lucky.
Zero snark intended.
My wife has been using Macs for a long time now while I use both Macs and Dells with Linux and, occasionally, a Lenovo or an HP. We have gone through at least 10 Macs in total and none of them failed in less than 8 years. One got a puffy battery (replaced in warranty), one got chipped when it fell from the desk (a white MacBook, Apple replaced the bottom, keyboard, and palm rest for free, even though the machine was out of warranty, but was listed in a recall for the palm rest). Some HDs died and some flash got upgraded. While it's not a daily driver, even the white MacBook is still going strong (as is the Bondi Blue iMac, the eMac, and the dual G5, none of which get much uptime these days, but boot up just fine every month or so). Both our current Macs (a 13" Pro and an i5 Mini) are from 2014 and will be replaced by M2 ones because they can't get the newest OS (while I can get away with it, my wife won't for long due to professional compliance rules).
No consumer-grade PC laptop or desktop of mine lasted that long in active use (some x86 servers did, as all the Sun and IBM PPC/POWER stuff) without extensive overhauling. Even my Thinkpads got cracks after five years.
The thing that worries me the most with the newer Macs is the flash storage - when it dies, I don't expect them to be repairable. I hope Apple includes M.2 slots in the future, even if the laptops need to be bulkier because of that.
He basically never used it as a laptop, and it's been plugged in to an external monitor and keyboard for many years. He used to stack paper on top of it until I told him to stop it so it could vent better. I would update the software, but I think it's been a while since there's been a new security update. I picked it up recently while visiting and noticed it wouldn't close all the way - uh oh.
So I told him his battery was going bad and could explode. He took it to an independent repair shop the next day. They replaced it with a new battery and cleaned out over a decade of dust in the chassis for $120.
I tried to impress upon him that having the same computer for over 10 years without ever having to take it in (or really do any kind of maintenance besides software updates) is extraordinary - he understands now that computers are a little more like cars. They need to be serviced sometimes. Not nearly as frequently as cars. And those laptops were not known for having good thermals.
I'm on the verge of buying him a new MacBook just so he will be on the latest software - but for what he does (email, web browsing) the Air works just as well as it did in 2011.
I think I might end up getting him a gently used M1 Mac Mini though since it never moves from his desk and it would be under $500.
Anyways, I'm on an M1 MacBook Pro and it's hard to see myself buying a new Macbook Pro in the next 5 years minimum. I just don't need to. They fixed pretty much all of the problems their laptops had.
A $200 Chromebook will work fine.
I assume Windows is doing better on that front than ChromeOS. MacOS sure as hell is.
Perhaps i'm just lucky... but I use it everyday for hours. It traveled to super remote places.
I want to use it for 2 or 3 more years (10 years in total would be nice!)
How much memory do you have? Seemed like my biggest concern when it came to this generation of MacBooks and longevity.
I could imagine upgrading to the M3 or even M4 MBA, but at that point it will have been 4–5 years on the M1.
This isn't to defend Apple's stingy memory and storage specs, I just don't end up needing more than that really for the kind of work I do.
The base SSD was 500GB too. Which I'm using like... half of? It's the same thing with iPhones. The base storage amount for Pro models is 128GB and I never run up against that limit. Maybe if I took way more pictures and videos.
I store all my important data in different versions of the cloud (code I write in remote Github repos, files in Google Drive) so on device stuff is more ephemeral.
If I was a professional photographer or video editor, I'd care a lot more. Again, I think they should offer more a base but I don't ever run into actually needing it so it's not a pain point for me.
There is an application called "AlDente" that lets you control this more precisely - not only can you essentially force it to hold at a specific charge level at any time, but you can also configure battery temperature limits (battery won't charge above, eg, 35C) and also "sailing mode" which gives it some hysteresis so it won't immediately charge up to 80% (or whatever you set) but rather stay at (eg) 76% if you run unplugged for a few minutes.
Except when they’re not and Apple tries very hard to bury the problem while the machine is still relevant, so your choices are either to pay for (expensive) repairs out of pocket or dump it and buy a different model. Then years later once the machine is obsolete for most, will they finally give in and offer a free repair to the lucky ones who have been left holding these hot potatoes of a defective model. Not every time though, sometimes they just won’t accept responsibility at all, ever.
See the GPU issues, the battery issues, the butterfly keyboards, the yellow tinted panels…
So we are talking about ~ 30 years cumulative ownership with 3 battery changes and 3 MagSafes. Not bad in my book. If you want to nuke e waste, buy a Mac and hope it’s not a lemon. They rarely are
I very much enjoy using my Macbook over any windows laptop (the trackpad and keyboard are just so much better), but I am concerned about spending $3k on another laptop in a year or so when this one runs into an issue again.
My own experience (4 MacBooks Pros) and that of providing MacBook Air and Pros to a dozen or so staff (with 50 or so on non-Mac kit) leads me to conclude this statement is not true.
They are great as long as they work but no better in terms of longevity to equivalent kit from other manufacturers, at least in my limited, non-scientific, IMHO experience.
- M1 mba, 1 usb port dead.
- 15' mbp 2019, all ports dead. I have been told that the logicboard is dead, and they wanted 850 euro to replace it.
But new Macs with soldered RAM and soldered storage and glued batteries may feel nicer on the Apple Store shelf, but a few years down the road when the base model specs are no longer adequate and the latest OSX releases drop them from support, you won't be able to repeat that process.
this isn't "anti-apple bias", i like macs and will keep buying them. but the claim that they're more durable or longer-lasting than equivalent windows laptops is just nonsense. you can't expect 9 years out of one, but if you're very very lucky it might last that long.
my Acer chromebook that i bought in 2013 is "still going strong". so is the pair of the absolute cheapest possible dell inspiron i bought in 2012 for rental customers to use at outdoor events. but i'm not going around telling people they should expect acer or dell laptops to last a decade.
you simply don't need to upgrade computers like you did in the 90s and early 2000s.
My own personal anecdote is that I spilled a trivial amount of booze on my MacBook 9 years ago and was left with the option of whether I wanted to replace the entire lower case. While it was my fault for drinking and computing, I just see it as being an expensive device to maintain when you accidentally damage it. I'd rather play a lower stakes game with a cheaper product that I'd buy more frequently as my needs change over the years.
Take it in, thinking okay, maybe $300 for parts and labor.
Hah, no. "So we're looking at $950..."
followed by the Apple guy then saying "How about we look at getting you into a new MacBook instead?"
Nah. It worked fine, and was mostly attached to her desk and digital piano, and continued to work just fine on AC power.
I've spilled more drinks onto a single Thinkpad than I've killed Apples with. Thinkpads (used to?) have a pan under the keys with a drainage hole that goes out below the laptop. No damage whatsoever from several spills.
Apple has a lot of fanboys that are not entirely rational about their fanboyism.
At the risk of sounding like a dead meme, "a laptop going strong for over 9 years" is already the default for the kinds of folks who would opt for Linux and who would replace their laptops HDD with an SSD.
My $800 laptop from 2015 has been 16GiB RAM and 512TB SSD and it still works perfectly (save for an Ethernet port which I regrettably damaged). It's running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, which is supported for three more years as of this comment.
This is kind of a standard experience for people in Linux land. So by comparison, a $1600 laptop with 8GiB RAM and a 256GB HDD which is no longer receiving security updates does not sound like a good deal.
yeah, Apple computers do last long. But it is ridiculous that you can’t upgrade RAM or hard disk or pretty much anything, after spending THAT much money.
In my experience, this was true during the 68k and PPC days, but after the x64 transition quality went downhill, fast.
The problem with these kinds of anecdotes is they lack a control. If you compared an identically priced PC laptop you might find that there's almost no difference. You're just making an assumption without any actual contrasting data to back it up.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32474827
And the problem with apple hardware is you barely can fix anything yourself and without Apple care it costs a lot of money because they can't replace single parts but only complete modules.
Personally I have a mid-2012 13" MBP, 16GB, 1TB SSD, 2K external display and a third displayLink display running Ventura and it's still going strong. I have several more for giving coding lessons / as backups for me ;) I dream of the day Apple goes back to making something as serviceable as them, but I won't lose sleep waiting.
I think this is standard for most laptops that cost over $600
Or at least my experience with my Asus and Acer brand 'gaming' laptops.
My computer from 2014 is still my daily driver and I use it for modern gaming. This 2014 computer even does CAD with no slowdowns, its really hard to justify buying something new. I can afford a new computer, I just havent had a reason to. Maybe with AI, I might spend like 35k on a tower so I can run my own LLMs.
My mother still uses my even more cheapo laptop from 2010 - my brother in law replaced the HDD with an SSD, but that's the extent of maintenance done. The battery sort of works, but barely.
Meanwhile my work MBP in 2019 started developing keyboard issues after a few months of use - just like the units my two coworkers from the same room had. To be fair that was a particularly bad model year.
A laptop generally should last seven years, but most people here don't see their devices reach that age because they pass them on after less than three.
> and she abuses the shit out of it.
It is all own stories. Go to any university or school. Give the student a mac. Wait for a few months and see.
Don't use an Apple Reseller for this without checking Apple's battery replacement price first. The reseller I went to quoted 2.5x the price, and said they were unaware of Apple's price (seems unlikely), which they could not match.
Very often! I'm not an Apple person, but every laptop I've ever owned has kept going strong well past the 10 year mark.
Apple should start at 512GB. It doesn't meaningfully increase their BOM, and gets rid of a lot of user frustration.
Also, I notice you had a 2014 machine, so you skipped the keyboard issues that plagued Apple until ~2021.
Macbooks are great if you get a model without some serious design fault - like screen protection peeling off, or butterly keyboard breaking.
No. The spare parts are available 5 years since the end of sale of the product; may be longer, if they are available, but max for 7 years. Batteries for 10.
See here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
I also have 2015 13" MBP. It is perfectly fine hardware-wise, but it is not supported by the current OS already. (It is supported by Monterey, which still receives security updates). I also have 2012 Thinkpad (T430s). It is also perfectly fine hardware-wise, and it is supported by current OS (both Windows and Linux), and neither of them even plans to obsolete them. (Heck, Linux distributions are just starting carefully considering x86-64 microarchitectures).
> the anti-apple bias is strong enough
You should consider whether you are not having apple-bias. The Job's RDF joke existed not without a reason.
It may last, but a laptop with 8GB of RAM becomes less and less useful over time
I agree with you, but that doesn’t change the fact outside the US, many Apple products are 15+% more expensive than they were a few years ago. In the UK we’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis—my bills have shot up and I simply don’t have the extra disposable income.
I mean shit, I’m a decently paid developer (for the north of the UK, so not London) and until my most recent rise a base 16” MacBook Pro cost almost an entire month’s take-home salary.
Have a look at Open Core Legacy Patcher (https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/), it’s great! My wife is using my old 2011 17” MBP as a desktop laptop, it works flawlessly on Ventura 13.3 :)
As other posters have demonstrated, having a laptop last this long is part good design and part good luck.
There is no Apple-bias. Apple hardware is not really any better than other brands, but they are chic and you pay for it. That's almost always been the case, speaking as a Mac guy before it became cool (pre-iPod). Stories of longevity for any brand are generally from people who take care of their stuff, but you can find exceptions even here.
I bought a refurbished Lenovo laptop 10 years ago for $300, it's still going strong after updating to an SSD a couple of years ago. The comparable Apple hardware would have cost 3x that. I also don't have to worry about losing security updates because my hardware doesn't go EOL like you just described.
I suspect many of us agree, and full disclaimer I am an Apple customer since about 1990. That said - that so many base units across their product line come with paltry specs is really upsetting. Frankly, it feels like environmental waste for them to still be selling machines with only 8gb ram / less than 1TB min storage. Sure, I've heard their song-and-dance about storage in the cloud and how because of their memory management 8gb isn't really just 8gb - and I find those arguments to be horse pucky.
Also - if your battery is still kicking after 9 years consider yourself very, very, weirdly lucky. I bet if you put our a survey you would find a number of us who didn't come close to that, whether due to keyboard issues, battery, etc.
My wife needed a laptop for class a year ago, so I gave her my old macbook pro 13 i bought in 2014. I also had a macbook air m1 for personal use, which I replaced recently with a macbook pro 14 m1, and planned to give my wife the air. She refuses the air bc she likes the old 13 so much, and she abuses the shit out of it.
How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? Even the battery life is still ok. I am going to have to force her to consider the air bc the old 13 is a security risk without OS updates.
The only reason why I replaced the old 13 with the air was bc the 13 could not render 4k 60fps on an external display. Otherwise, I would have kept using it.
The old 13 cost me about $1600 USD new (256GB HD, 8 GB ram). Amortize that cost over 9 years and that doesn't seem so bad. Even my iphone 8 is still going strong.
Another anecdote - my current employer gave me a new macbook pro 15 when I started here back in 2017. It took my abuse well and the only reason I am not still using it is bc my employer forced me to upgrade when the m1 pros came out.
You probably won't need to replace your air for like 7 years, or when apple stops updates for your machine.
EDIT - I am surprised I am getting downvoted. You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product.