EDIT: Getting a ton of great responses thanks everyone <3 Once this is up for 24 hours or so I’ll make another edit summarizing everyone’s recs for future reference. Keep ‘em coming!
TL;DR Have any recs for non-Apple phones/laptops that have lifespans of at least 5+ years?
Wanted to get everyone’s opinion on want brands/products have worked for them. I’m lightly techy and not afraid to put some effort in, but also don’t want to build everything from scratch. I think Apple’s products are often anti-consumer, anti-privacy, anti-yadda yadda yadda.
At the same time, with both phones and laptops, I’ve found my Apple products to have double or even triple the lifespan of any other brand. I did my research and bought a $1000+ HP laptop with Ryzen7 a little over two years ago, and due to a flaw in the hinge which is now subject to a class action lawsuit, the screen has cracked and it’s mostly unusable. Other purchase haven’t failed quite that dramatically but don’t tend to last as long. On the other hand, my or my partner’s old Macbooks and iPhones are easily seeing 5+ years of use in addition to software updates.
So let me know what’s worked for you!
Any laptop designed for enterprise like Lenovo Thinkpad or hp elitebook/ProBook
Your laptop was an HP pavilion, right? Those are designed to barely last the warranty period. Their engineers on this product line have a long experience of carefully choosing plastics that will degrade within 24 months
IMHO MacBooks are super overrated. OS support is not as long as normal computers (5 years instead of “indefinite”) and they still have hardware flaws to hinges and keyboard
I don’t currently use macOS, but macOS support is typically about 7 years, sometimes up to 10. Apple supports the 3 latest versions of its operating system.
Mainstream Windows support seems to be about 1-3 years.
What are you talking about? You can take a Pentium 4 from twenty years ago and install latest windows 10. Microsoft releases a new version every 6 to 12 months but the computer updates automatically. Of course it makes no sense for them to continue supporting an old version that anyway everyone can update from without issues
And once apple decided the os is not compatible, your computer is on death row. Latest apps won’t run. Ok, can get security updates, but you needed to run latest final cut pro x? Bad luck, insert credit card and purchase new Mac
You, in fact, cannot install Windows 10 on a Pentium 4.
Ok then an athlon64 from the year 2003
So I’ve only somewhat recently got into the Apple ecosystem, but I can tell you that once a macOS version loses support it’s technically on death row but nowhere near as dramatic as you mention.
I recently daily drove a Mac running macOS Catalina (2019) and I was surprised that it still ran everything I needed for my IT degree (Zoom, Office 365 suite, VSCode, Signal, Tailscale, etc.) and the only real issue I noticed was Apple’s Xcode not being compatible.
I also own a Mac mini 2012 with i5/8GB, and while I don’t use it often, my parents daily drive that as a smart TV and web browsing machine with no real issues at all. The last official version of macOS on it was Catalina, but I used community patches to push it up to Monterey (2021) and it’s totally fine.
I think when you own and actually use a Mac, you will find in its own way, that they do last longer than Windows equivalents. I have a 2012 Latitude with i5/8GB and yes I could run the latest Win10 natively (but not Win11 without hacks) but I don’t think it exactly cuts the mustard anymore, and I think most people who would use it would generally agree. Given its age I would just Linux it up if I wanted to daily drive it.
And batteries. Swollen batteries in MacBooks were very common at my work. I have never seen it in any other laptop but Desktop Support would just react to it with ‘o, another one’.
HP’s consumer side definitely declined rapidly in quality over the last 10-15 years - had an HP that needed repairs after a few months back in '14 whereas I’ve got a Pavilion from '04 or so that’s still going!
it varies , I had 2015 zbook, HP repaired it under warranty about 4 times for ongoing undiagnosable video failures. (At end it had new display and display cable, new GPU, new mobo and new keyboard, since they could not locate what was triggering display problem) However 2017 Zbook still chugging alomg with 0 issues.