My younger daughter uses a Mac for work (she works mostly from home). She tells me how excellent they are to use, but also how often hers breaks down. They do seem to inspire fervent loyalty despite quality issues. She has two dead "Mac Mini" boxes on the shelf, awaiting her husband's and my attention.
Her backup is my old IBM ThinkPad R31 running XP Pro - probably 7 years old, and still working flawlessly as it has since the day I bought it new. For a while, I wanted it to go on the blink so that I could have a new one. In the end, I bought a T43 anyway and gave her the R31.
Having repaired laptops and desktops for a dozen or more friends (some rather too regularly), I would say Macs seem more reliable than many Windows machines, but still don't compete with ThinkPads - based on a sample of six ThinkPads that I've operated over about the last 20 years.