I like it when both sides overreach without actually being incorrect. Time to get into the nuances!
Apple products offer really great value for the money.
they have never been a value proposition.
Both statements can be true. You can sell a laptop with 8GB of RAM for 100k and it's terrible value. Support it with software updates for 10 years and it's great value.
My 2012 Macbook Pro works just as well as it did when I built it (another story). I don't know of anyone who has a non-apple laptop from 2012 that's still useful for daily browsing/streaming/spreadsheeting.
Now why that is so, can have a range of explanations. Very few, if any non-Apple laptops were made out of metal in 2012. The ones that were, were workstation replacements that have fixed lifecycles. Consumer non-Apple laptops are always built down to a cost to reach a price point. Plastics eventually degrade. All kinds of skews and biases but the statement remains true: I have a 2012 Apple laptop that works with zero issues in 2024. If I had purchased it new for $2500 back then, it would've been terrible value. But 12 years later it's the best paisa-vasool I've ever seen. Put that aside, I have a
2003 Powerbook G4 that still holds a charge on the original battery.
Granted these are all much older designs and way before Apple's retina/non-upgradeable phase. These days this is more true than ever concerning
any company's products, not just Apple's:
My recommendation is to buy stuff thinking that it would go bad just a day after the warranty.
As for this:
Interestingly, even the battery in Apple products lasts really long.
It's because Apple was one of the first companies to switch completely to lithium polymer cells which have a higher charge cycle rating compared to the 18650's that some non-Apple laptops are still using today. Apple first did this to meet their design targets and then spent a couple of decades iterating them by making super-thin laptops. With LiPo batteries, similar cells are usually matched together due to the nature of their assembly. For 18650 cells, assembly is usually contracted out to whoever has the best deal. But this also means replacements are easier and repairs are possible, which is not true for Apple's batteries.
So you get 500 cycles from a traditional 18650 battery pack or 800 to 1200 with an optimized LiPo battery. My G4 has an 18650-based battery pack, so it's only survived this long because it wasn't used as much.
Apple doesnt have any unique or better battery tech
This was back in 2011:
Apple says new notebook batteries are designed to retain 80% of original capacity after 1000 cycles.
If you have a MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro, you can check the battery cycle count. This lets you see how many charge and drain cycles have been used on the battery, and gives you an idea of…
osxdaily.com
It was a pretty big deal back then when Apple made that claim. These days however, it's not anything special.
That is quite surprising to hear given I did similar with an HP Spectre back in 2017 and its still going strong save for the numbers 0-4 not registering any more.
Apple has a few bad apples (ha). The 2011 Macbook Pros had defective nVidia graphics — fascinating recap of events here:
https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2021/10/13/apple-vs-nvidia-what-happened.html
It's on its third battery change currently.
Yeah, my 2012 Macbook Pro is on its fourth battery now.
Suppose that was the best you could do.
apple does have international warranty afaik, it didnt work in this case?
I didn't have a way to send it back nor did I want to pay customs twice. I was in South America at the time. Plus I had it for two years at the point and Apple dropped the 17" model from their line-up so I wasn't interested in the retina replacements (I had two SSDs in my 17"). I eventually got the 15" non-retina model because of all the money I had spent on apps that I didn't want to repurchase for Windows.
Strangely, it was the quality of third-party macOS software that made me want to pay for software and so I've been paying for every app/program I use since 2011. The only time I've ever returned to the high seas was to recover software I had paid for but then the company discontinued downloads (VSCO for example).