No surprises here. Just like the lockdown on iPhone screen and part replacements, Macbooks suffer from the same Apple’s anti-repair and anti-consumer bullshit. Battery glued, ssd soldered in and can’t even swap parts with other official parts. 6000$ laptop and you don’t even own it.
ThinkPads are far superior than MacBooks for longevity, user repairability, durability, keyboard and thermals. Also Linux compatibility is highest alongside System76, Framework, Tuxedo and others.
Not that I’m advocating for Apple’s inexcusable behaviour, but as someone who’s worked in IT managing fleets of hundreds of Thinkpads (among others like Apple, Dell, Acer, HP), respectfully, they are far less reliable and durable than a MacBook. The only devices I had with higher failure rates than ThinkPads were Acer laptops.
They are certainly more repairable, but so are others like Dell and HP. Lenovo were one of the earlier manufacturers to pull some anti-repair moves such as soldering memory to the mainboard (on the Yoga models).
I think your statement is far more accurate in the days when IBM owned the ThinkPad brand, but unfortunately Lenovo have run it into the ground as far as quality goes.
All that said, I certainly hope we see more projects like Framework so that these big manufacturers can get some sort of reality check.
Lenovo did not run ThinkPad to the ground. User repairability has become a lot more accessible to the average user since, and unlike greedy IBM, Lenovo prices them at various tiers. The only thing that has become less accessible is the battery, which is behind a few screws and a back cover now, to make the laptops thinner and lighter.
I have seen plenty ThinkPads being given to employees in corporate India, and they just work, unlike Dells and HPs, and are not astronomically costly to to buy and repair like MacBooks.
You’re just flat out wrong on this.
There’s a Wikipedia article for each series of thinkpad/idea book or whatever and it’s got a color coded chart you can scroll through to see the progression from more user replaceable to less.
Lenovo still has some lines that are modular, but they’re doing what everyone else is.
Only the X serie ultrabooks and Yogas are not as modular. What else is so non-modular among ThinkPads? Hot swappable battery versus battery behind few screws does not practically count, because they are easy to replace.
The e series and non-yoga L13s after 2019 (no surprise there), the t-series is available with partial soldered ram and a bunch of other stuff after 2013 (O.O) and only has a few configurations without soldered parts after 2020. Even the p series has partial soldered skus and one fully soldered one.
Oh yeah and all that is true for cpus as well. I didn’t feel like deciphering the two incredibly close colors they use on that chart for “socketed” and “soldered” so I’m not making specific claims but there’s a lot of soldered cpus in the thinkpad line now.
There has been a movement industry wide towards soldered components and Lenovo hasn’t completely committed the thinkpad line to it but they’re absolutely dipping their toes in.
Non-soldered CPUs basically have not been a thing since a decade, and only the most niche maker Framework has something resembling that today. That is less on Lenovo and more on how the “slim” trend has gone for laptop industry as a whole.
I have noticed the soldered RAM in the E/L serie, but did not know T has that now. But I think the general essence of a ThinkPad with user repairability and durability is retained even now, with even the base E serie since E480 having MILSPEC certification. Great ThinkPads are simply more expensive, and any ThinkPad you get will be way better than consumer grade laptops, which I think has merit.