I've never had any of the hardware in my three Thinkpads fail on me. My Macbook, in the space of three years, had its plastic casing start to flake off, its battery failed, its power adapter failed, its hard drive failed. The other piece of Apple hardware I owned is a TimeCapsule. That lasted a couple of years before it conked out. Luckily this was a known problem and I got a free replacement. I have a friend who went through three iPhones, that all just conked out on him before upgrading to an Android device, which he has had no problems with.
Apple hardware looks good, but it's limited in function, and poor quality.
A Thinkpad keyboard kicks the shit out of a Macbook keyboard. My Thinkpad has a built in smart card reader, gps and a 3g modem. All work flawlessly under Ubuntu. It has both a nipple as well as the trackpad. The nipple on my Thinkpad is much better than the trackpad on my Macbook was.
I had the internal fan on a Thinkpad suddenly fail at a critical time during a business trip, rendering the laptop unusable. Very unpleasant. The machine was less than two years old. It soured me on the Thinkpad brand.
Based on your comment, and given your high HN karma, I'll reconsider Thinkpads. I just bought a System76, but next time I'm on the market for a new laptop, I'll look at Lenovo's offerings.
Apple hardware looks good, but it's limited in function, and poor quality.
A Thinkpad keyboard kicks the shit out of a Macbook keyboard. My Thinkpad has a built in smart card reader, gps and a 3g modem. All work flawlessly under Ubuntu. It has both a nipple as well as the trackpad. The nipple on my Thinkpad is much better than the trackpad on my Macbook was.