In 2003 I bought a 12" laptop from Apple. It was the second or third iteration of the model, and they'd produce another few before phasing out the line.
That 9.5 year old machine still works well.
I think it's because it was a few iterations into the product. The first one was a big engineering lift. It probably had some significant bugs. Two relaunches in, they'd edited and revised some key trouble spots. And they built it to last.
In other news, my iPad first generation doesn't like to stay connected to the Internet for more than five or ten minutes. No more Alaska gold mining show. Rebekah is thankful.