[perth]

The issue with thinkpads has always been the externals! I've only enjoyed them for their budget internals and their openness via extensive reverse-engineering. The lack of a metal body of any sort more or less sentences them to an eventual crumbling, and iFixit rates most Thinkpad T420 body maintenance as "Moderate" to "Hard", so good luck repairing it when something on that plastic case cracks since it will happen eventually, and there's no Apple Store for thinkpad repairs.

[boomskats]

> there's no Apple Store for thinkpad repairs

I pay around 50USD/year for an enterprise grade Thinkpad support plan with Lenovo, where they send an engineer to either my home or office the _next day_, complete with any spare parts needed to fix whatever might have gone wrong, whether it's accidental damage or a hardware defect. I've only needed that support maybe four or five times over the last decade, but each time it's been stellar: new screens, mainboards, keyboards, broken case parts, etc. No caveats or gotchas or 'ooh that voids your warranty' to worry about, ever. It gave me full confidence to run my company and equip all of my devs with Thinkpads that run on Fedora - so much so, that when we were acquired a couple of years ago, my only negotiating condition that caused a stir was the requirement that me and my team get to keep our Linux+ThinkPad stack.

What I just described is the polar opposite to every experience I've ever had with anything to do with Apple, ranging from the genius bar arguments to the six week waits to fix our designer's spacebar that stopped working because someone dropped a a breadcrumb in there. It just doesn't compare.

Side notes relevant to your comment:

- the T420 that you mention is now an 11 year-old piece of hardware, I don't understand why you're referencing it

- even so, plastic gets brittle over time. I don't know anyone with a 10+ year old MacBook that still runs

- iFixit are heavily biased, or at least they were when the T420 came out (it's in the iName)

- with all that said I still can't wait to be able to use a fanless desktop M2 as my daily driver (@LinaAsahi you're awesome)

[filchermcurr]

Barely relevant anecdotes:

My mom daily drives my old 2012 retina Macbook Pro. Neither of us have ever had any problems with it. So it's possible for macs to hit the 10+ year mark!

I also still use my X200 tablet (not as a primary machine anymore, but it decoratively runs Creatures Docking Station 24/7). No crumbling or even any signs of aging plastic. That thing is still a tank.

[boomskats]

I owned a 2012 rMBP (the 15 with the proper quad core) and it was an absolutely excellent laptop. I had it as a secondary machine for design/music work but used it quite a lot, and sold it to a mate of mine who used it every day until it died around 2019 I think.

Is your tablet the one with the 400nit outdoor screen?

[goosedragons]

Metal dents. Metal scratches. And if you get any of the colors other than boring bright grey then it's really easy to scratch. And at least things like keyboard replacement, SSD replacement are easy to replace on ThinkPads.

Nothing's cracked on my W520 yet, and I don't have to worry about plugging in the power adapter damaging the finish like I did with my Space Grey MBP.

[frosted-flakes]

I dropped my aluminum body Dell XPS 13 on a tile floor (it was in my messenger bag, but I don't think that helped much). It hit the rear corner and mushroomed the metal quite a bit, but nothing broke. I'm reasonably sure that if it was a plastic body it would have broke.

[boomskats]

Most Thinkpads are not normal plastic. The W520 is carbon fiber and glass reinforced plastic over an alloy frame.

[nuodag]

You can just order body parts from Lenovo (true, probably not for t420 anymore) or third party resellers, or just take them from another one.

And there are a lot of Thinkpad service partners stores, mainly for business customers, I bring around 1-3 Thinkpads a month there for repair (we have ours close by).

[detaro]

> and there's no Apple Store for thinkpad repairs.

But a widespread network of service companies that will happily fix your devices, in most places way denser then the network of apple stores. (Not to mention providing on-site warranty services)

[ekianjo]

You dont need an Apple Store when the parts are sold everywhere by everyone, not only in a hipster store.