Of course this is purely anecdotal, but amongst my friends and coworkers I've seen magsafe connectors fail at about the same rate as normal power adapters. Usually at the end where the wire goes into the wall plug brick part.

Yes the cheap to replace wire end breaks easily. But the expensive-to-repair computer side port is solid. You're going to see a lot more expensive computer repairs with the USB-C charging port.

True. Although I think it would be much better for durability if Apple used the same wire/power brick layout as everyone else: have the power brick in the middle of the wire, accepting 120/240 V from a standard "figure-eight" cord. Then that cord would be the one that breaks, and they cost $1 to replace. Of course this conflicts with Apple's business model...

At least over here in Europe, you can attach a bog-standard 240V cord to the Apple power brick so it sits in the middle of the cord. However, this does not help if the computer-side plug does not disengage if your lovely child barrels down your living room.

Magsafe has prevented a costly fall or other here.

All the Apple laptop and iPad adapters I've gotten accept a standard figure-8 cord if you just slide off the national plug. For my it's the slim cord between the charger and the machine that wears out.

Interesting. I've never seen anyone using it with the figure-8 cord. My intuition was that having the adapter stuck to the wall tends to often bend the thin cord on the DC side. As you say, that's what usually fails.

MagSafe was great when laptops got 3-4 hours (or less) of battery life which required re-charging in hostile conditions. MagSafe3 is 8-10 hours of battery life. No one can possibly trip over your charger if it's not plugged in.

that's an interesting point-- i was wondering why not having MagSafe anymore wasn't making me that upset (considering how magical and awesome i thought it was when it came out) and it definitely comes down to this. i guess we hit the point where the magnetic fanciness has become less useful than reducing cableage sometime in the past few years...