I think its a bit harsh to say that a 9 year old device has failed from the point of quality or longevity. There are not very many electrical devices that last any longer than that. I remind people that the now seemingly ubiquitous iPhone didn't even exist 10 years ago.
The industry standard suggests that if you get 5 years out of a computer you are doing well so 9 years is excellent.
I agree with all that you've said, Rod.
However, Apple is starting to suffer, ironically, from their own high quality.
Macs have always been extremely reliable, superbly engineered computers. Lots of long-time Mac users will tell you that they replaced one or more old Macs because they just wanted a newer one, not because the old one wore out.
The limiting factor to a Mac's lifespan, in the past, typically was their rotating disk hard drive (if anything). RDHD's statistically become unreliable (i.e. likely to fail) after four years, and terribly unreliable after 5 years. Many Macs have come with SSD's (solid state hard drives) for a long time now. While an SSD can fail at anytime, just like a RDHD, they may also last as long as 20 years with no problems.
So, the thing is, since Macs have had really excellent performance for at least a decade now (really, better performance than most folks need for anything that your average user might do with their Mac), and since they no longer tend to fail due to an expired hard drive, users are holding onto their Macs for about twice as long as they used to. With so many users doing that, the *expectation* is that they will last almost indefinitely.
Ten to twenty years ago, if a Mac user complained that his or her ten year old Macintosh wasn't "supported" by Apple anymore, or that it was failing, everyone would probably have just said "well...yeah, so what?". Now users tend to expect their Macintosh to last almost indefinitely. it isn't economically viable for Apple to support old Macs forever, but users are starting to expect them to.
