The problem is finding the $1200 windows machine that feels valuable and worth it after four years; it's hard to find one that has the "build quality" if you will. Maybe people with the Surface are pleased with it still, that looked pretty nice.
I mean, any "pro" grade Dell or Lenovo laptop will last 10 years if it's not dropped or otherwise abused too badly. I've had several. I don't run Windows on them, so don't know how that experience would be. But hardware-wise they hold up. They aren't quite as light and elegant as a Mac but that doesn't matter to me.
Even commodity Dells like the Inspiron and XPS models tend to be extremely repairable (and fairly upgradable, which is where Apple really falls flat). Granted that there will always be lemons (and there have been lemon Macs, in which case you are SOL), but by and large people replacing PCs after a year or two just don't care to take the time.
I'm currently using a Dell XPS laptop that will turn 12 years old in a few months. Since I bought it, I've been able to
1. Replace the AC adapter and battery multiple times (the most common failure point for this model).
2. Upgrade the screen (yes, really!) to a wide color gamut model that can do photo editing in the AdobeRGB space. (New Macs have good screens, but not so long ago even the MBP only had an sRGB screen).
3. Add an SSD.
4. Upgrade the memory (supports up to 32 GB).
5. Upgrade the WiFi adapter card to a new model that supports WiFi 5 (née AC), getting me much faster wireless without having to buy a new laptop.
And ... a bunch of other stuff. All this has cost me less money, in total, than a brand new bottom-of-the-line Dell model would have cost me at any point in the last 12 years. The point being, if you're going to replace your device after 4 years anyway, may as well get a Macbook Air at this point (especially with the M1/M2 chip). But I've been delighted by the longevity of my old Dell.
I still have my Asus ROG g73S from 2010 and boot it up from time to time when I need a windows machine or CD/DVD/blu ray player. It runs windows 10 these days and doesn't have any issues with drivers, I definitely think its closer to apple in terms of both price and longevity. I use a macbook pro as my daily driver now and love the smaller form factor though.
They usually keep working just fine, but the Macs get beat up and bent a bit and keep "sticking together", the Dells and friends end up with broken covers, cracks, etc. Doesn't matter for the working part, but makes it much harder when someone wants "a newish one".
Out of 6 ThinkPads from the "pro" tiers that I've had, none of them failed at all and all of them worked fine for much longer than that, except from one whose screen failed after 3 years or so (ThinkPads had a bad quality period around the Vista era, then recovered much of the lost quality, although if they fall from a height they probably no longer end up fine while denting the ground like my 2005 ThinkPad did. By the way, in fact that ThinkPad, from 2005, still works, except that obviously it has almost no battery, doesn't support the latest Windows and is slow with current bloated software and websites).
