I don't agree with great hardware, if we're talking about durability and easily fixable. At least the Macbook line seems designed to fail after a number of years or be too expensive to continue fixing in favor of buying a new one. Apple products, besides the high end desktops, seem disposable, no matter how well made it looks.
Years is still a long time to measure the lifespan of a laptop. Plenty of less-expensive laptops fail at the one-year mark, some fail at two, some laptops equally as expensive as a Macbook will fail before five years are up. Some Macs fail before five years, some last beyond that.
And five years is a long time when it comes to computers.