When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave me 8-10h battery life and the only issue I ever had was that 1.5 years ago the battery was reaching end of life and capacity started dropping very fast.
That was just a 70$ repair I could easily do myself.
My youngest daughter just inherited my mother's x220 (?) (she has been running Linux) that I got for my mother in 2011 or 2012. That never received any work and still works fine except that I didn't change the battery so you have to run it of ac power.
My older daughter and my mother both just got some used thinkpads that are >3years old and don't have any issues either.
So from my experience a 5 year lifetime for a macbook is really nothing special and definitely not "crazy good".
Once on this site I saw someone talking about how the lifespan is so good they only had to replace their MacBook every two years instead of every year, and it just made me realize "crazy good lifespan" is meaningless.
The only people I answer the phone to are people I know who prefer that mode of communication. That list mostly consists of people older than me, with a few exceptions. For everyone else, whatever textual mode of communication is my preferred way to talk, since then I have a record to go back to, time to think to respond, no social pressure to talk right now, and no worries about actually being able to hear the person.
Spam calls probably accelerated this cultural phenomenon, but I've atleast been this way before spam calls were as bad as they are now.
It's always funny to me how not answering the phone is presented as rude by some people, when calling someone is essentially just shouting 'talk to me, now!' at them.
This[1] comment from a while back also resonates with me a lot.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43976815