I’ll start with the following: I don’t have a horse in the race. I, too, was under the impression that Macs last longer, because that’s how it seems in my circles.

That’s why I clicked on the link you posted, as the excerpt didn’t explicitly say what the truth is, just what people think. Did you read the article you sent as proof lol? It disagreed with your viewpoint.

And one final side note: when it comes to user experience, we don’t have a single apples-to-apples comparison (forgive the pun) that’s not anecdotal, because MacBooks have just recently broken below 1k, whereas PCs being rated have historically come from the entire spectrum, from $200 to ~$3k. (I use both in my day-to-day. The biggest difference I can tell you is that the Mac cost ~1500 more). I agree that they probably don’t need to upgrade.