Comment by thewebguyd

I think a lot of people conflate "built to last" with "ability to be repaired by yourself."

To continue the car analogy, I could replace almost any part easily, with simple tools I have at home, on my 1990 GMC 1500 truck. Parts are plentiful and cheap, plenty of room to work on the engine, nothing is hidden inside black boxes. It's got 280k miles on it and still running great.

To contrast that with my 2020 Subaru Crosstrek hybrid, is much more difficult to work on, can't even fit my hands to access anything that's not on the top of the engine, other repairs requiring full engine removal and specialized tools. There's more electronics and more completely sealed systems.

Same can be said about some household appliances, and even computers. Not only were things, generally more repairable, but repair didn't require specialized tools in most cases, we didn't have to first melt glue, resolder SSDs, etc.

My old compaq Armada may not have been built to last at the time, but it was certainly stupid easy to repair and replace every single component in it.