I buy myself supposedly overpriced Macs and never have hardware issues, but buy family, that prefer Windows, more affordable $400-800 HP/Toshiba laptops. Over the last decade and a half, the HPs/Toshibas invariably have keyboard failures within a year or two, with ignored keypresses and key labels rubbing off, and internal fans seized, overheating problems. And those cheap plastic cases are never the same once opened. I hate them so much. Although, I suspect if I spent as much on a PC that I do on a Mac, we wouldn't have those issues, but I can't bring myself to spend that much on a Windows laptop.
The reliability issues are real. I have a MacBook Air that is 11 years old now, I haven't done anything but replace the battery, and it still works fine. The only real issue is that the memory is not upgradable, otherwise it would still be a generally useful machine (instead of just light web browsing and Zoom).
Certain vintages of Apple laptops have proven more durable than others in my experience.
My 2007 MBP went through a battery every 11 months for about 3 cycles before I finally missed the boat on getting that 4th battery replaced under warranty.
My 2013 MBA still has a perfectly healthy battery today, though it doesn't see much use and its disk just died yesterday.
My 2017 MBP's battery degraded significantly after about 300 or 400 cycles (within spec, I think). A few keys on the keyboard partially failed due to dust or whatever (common in this vintage). The screen had some sort of damage that gave a subtle color cast to parts of the image. The USB-C ports wear out after like 20 insertions and won't hold a cable in place anymore. A year or two ago I replaced the screen and bottom case (keyboard, battery) and it's still doing fine.
