[stoppingdown]

It was fun, for a while, and it taught me a lot, but I honestly don't miss it.

Agree on this.

I retired my Mac Pro 3,1 last year. Bought it new in 2008. So got 11 years of service, mostly without issues.

Disagree on this. Or, well, it's not meaningful because old products were better. I owned two Mac Mini, a PPC and a x86. The former worked until two years ago as a gateway (running Linux PPC). I think I bought it in 2005, so it lasted 13 years. Pretty good - but what I'm seeing is a deterioration of quality.

I own four Intel MBP's who ranged in the following years (by heart): 2006-2009, 2009-2013, 2013-2016, 2016-present. The #1 was the first aluminum MBP and the shell self-destroyed. The second was fine, it actually still works without an issue with Linux (it's just obsolete). The third had the infamous "discrete graphics adapter" issue; replaced twice in warranty, I had to give up when it broke for the third time (ironically I recovered it a few months ago, when I discovered a patch - not provided by Apple - that disables the faulty component). The current one has the minor troubles that I described yesterday. So, three out of four laptops had issues, and only half of them lived at least 4 yeas, which is my minimum target.