Ok here goes.
While I am certainly no professional using a Mac day-in-day-out (and I very much respect you guys/girls that do), I have found my latest Mac the most reliable machine by far. I've upgraded to the latest version every step and this thing trucks along faithfully. It goes for months without a restart which is far more than I can say for any Mac I've ever had before.
I'm kind of astonished that some would consider PPC era Macs as more 'quality'. The cases were kinda of crap. You had to open them up for any kind of specialized work like PCI cards. They broke easily and were a bit janky if you didn't have something like lowendmac or at least some help.
While I like them and have mad nostalgia about them, I can't honestly agree that PPC Macs were higher quality. The fact is that my '12 iMac is running the most current version of Mac OS seven years out from purchase, fusion drive included, it has been rock solid. I love my old 6500 and Quicksilver G4 to death, but this iMac is the best experience I've had with a Mac. I hate to sound like an advert but it's true. My 2013 11" MBA has also been great and is totally current.
Who knows, maybe I will be tempted to buy a new Mac if Apple ever comes out with a new one. But for now, I still don't see much reason to. And that is saying a lot.
As far as the Beige era is concerned (like your 6500) today a lot of those plastics are pretty crappy. But, starting with the iMac, and the B&W G3, I disagree with your statement. Out of all the Power Macs I own (the ones with handles, you know what I mean) only one of them has a single broken piece. A sawtooth I found at an e-waste center, just one handle. I don't even know how it was broke, someone had to have thrown it on the ground or something. And I've never seen another one like that. I got a B&W G3 in the mail, and it was packed terribly. I opened it and it was perfectly fine. Can't say the same about CRT eMacs and iMacs when shipped like that, but the weight of those CRTs is to blame.
nostalgia definitely has a lot to with why most people like them I'm sure. That's not totally the case with me. At the time of writing this, I am 24 years old. I was too young to have really any of these macs back when they were new. I owned an iBook G3 dual USB 500mhz, and a slot load iMac when I was in my early teens/pre-teens. I still have both of them today and they still work. I actually had a 6500 back then as well. I believe it was already over 10 years old by the time I had it. That was a very rock solid machine, and for it's age I was impressed with its performance.
I've never had a problem with janky macs, especially when working on them. The G4s are G5s particularity are very solid. I've never had one break while working on it. tbh the only systems I've ever had janky things breaking off are HPs and Dells. HPs I find are very janky. PowerMacs, the exact opposite.
I don't find new macs "janky" either. But as arkitect said, some people like to open up their computers. A 2012 iMac is going to be very difficult to do even basic maintenance on when the time does finally come. Hell even if you decide you need a larger drive or more RAM. Good luck with
that. And newer ones just get worse. That being said I think some of them are still great machines. But, most are planned obsolescence. At least your 2012 is possible to upgrade. Most are now soldered.
