I was recently upgrading a 2008 MacBook. Upgraded the hard drive and the memory. It was so easy. It is an absolute joy to service this machine. It also has many useful ports and an awesome battery indicator on the side.
I feel the same about my 2012 MacBookPro. While it was a _tiny_ bit down the path of "not user serviceable", replacing the battery and trackpad was extremely easy. And one of the first things I did to it was replace/upgrade Apple's RAM and drop an SSD into the optical bay.
We only have it good for one generation (unibodies)