I'd have to disagree with this. Have you owned one of the plastic Macbooks? Regardless of it being plastic it was still the toughest notebook I had owned to date. Yes, the Pro's are MUCH tougher and I'm glad I upgraded when I did, but I had no complaints or issues with the build quality of my plastic Macbook. It was a great machine.
My comparison was HP's, Dell's, and even an IBM that all ended up falling apart with only a few years of regular use. With the Macbook this was not so.
I have a plastic, black, 13" Macbook, and the quality is much, much higher than any Inspiron or Latitude that I've ever owned. The case is visibly seamless, and the system doesn't rattle if I shake it. The little touches like a battery-level indicator on the battery, and the MagSafe adapter, are also rather nice, as is not having a laptop that looks like it was designed to appeal to ten-year-olds.
If you want a PC manufacturer that's comparable, look to Lenovo, not Dell.
A few months ago I spilled a full mug of coffee all over my white macbook keyboard (no cream or sugar, tho). I didn't notice I'd knocked the mug over (it was behind me) but after a few seconds the monitor went black and the light on the power cord died. After a minute or so of me dabbing at it with a tissue like an idiot, my coworker told me to take out the battery; I picked it up and coffee spilled out the battery bay. But I took it out and set the machine on my desk to dry over the weekend.
Monday I came in, put in the battery, turned it on, and everything worked fine. And I mean everything, even the CD drive. I'm typing on it now. For comparison, a guy I know had the same thing happened to his thinkpad with a cup of plain water, and it just died.
I have a Macbook, and I love it to death, but I also know a guy who had this happen to his thinkpad, and it was actually fine. It turned out the keyboard was hermetically sealed from the rest of the machine, and it had drain holes through the middle of the laptop. He let the water drain, let the whole thing dry, and turned it back on, and it was in perfect shape.
Picking the (legacy) white MacBook as representative of the entire line is disingenuous. 100% of the modern line is unibody and does indeed represent superior design, from battery life to multi-touch trackpad.
There are 13" unibody Macbooks (not Pro). I have one.
Not anymore - the 13" unibody became a "Pro" after the recent refresh.
Re:Microsoft’s Long, Slow Decline
by RichardBronosky on Friday July 31, 2009 @02:28PM
(#735042)
The pre-unibody MacBooks were more sturdy that the pre-unibody MacBook Pros and PowerBooks.
Give me a break ... Design ? Yes. Build quality ? Hardly. The Macbook (not pro) is a plastic toy. Its quality is just the same as of those Dell's Inspirons. The Macbook Pro unibody may made a difference in build quality, but definitely not the Macbook.