I've had things like RAZR flip phones that were held together with screws and after a while they get really loose feeling. My work laptop, a 3 yr old Dell, creaks like a haunted house when I pick it up with the display open. Not my Apple equipment. My 5 yr old MacBook Pro sems as solid today as it was when I bought it. My iPhone seems to be made from a single slab of glass wrapped with a metal band. My iPad 2 is the same way - solid feeling.
Used to be, back when the phone company was broken up, cheap home phone makers were bolting big slugs of metal in the base of their stuff to make it feel solid. Solid is good - ever slam a car door? Cheap cars have doors that rattle. Good ones don't.
People value stuff that stays solid. As long as I can get my stuff fixed, I don't care if it's me that's doing the fixing or someone else. I used to fix my own cars, now I take them in. I can't fix the ECU and have no desire to buy the equipment necessary to be able to do so.