I don't think Apple is guilty of that. My wife was perfectly happy with her first-gen, 5 year-old C2D MacBook (we upgraded memory, hard-disk and battery) until a couple weeks back, when a small piece of the bottom casing fell off. Repairs will cost us about US$170 and it's still an excellent computer.
I am quite sure she'll be happy with her MBP for the next 5 years.
I agree, Apple is not particularly guilty of that; in fact, I think they are better than average. It's just that it looks like the average could be so much better, if only manufacturers and consumers cared.
Agreed. While my 3 year-old netbook is starting to show its age (I suspect support for its GPU will be dropped a couple Ubuntus from now), the fact I use it most of the time hooked to a keyboard, mouse and display allowed it to show less aesthetic aging than it would otherwise.
The Latitude line of Dell machines also ages very well - my company-issued notebook is a Latitude 4310 and it's built like a tank. My previous one, a D630 is still being used by a less lucky employee.
I am quite sure she'll be happy with her MBP for the next 5 years.