[bzzzt]

About the soldering part: memory prices don't plummet as hard as in 2005 anymore, so when you need more RAM, just buy it. By soldering it you also make it more robust. Most DIMM troubleshooting begins with 'reseat the modules'. And users won't place cheap modules which will cause issues and give your products a bad name.

[ThePhysicist]

Of course, you can select a 16 GB memory upgrade from Apple for 400 $ when you buy your laptop. On the other hand, a user-serviceable laptop would just enable you to buy that RAM yourself for around 100 $ and put it in the laptop. Also, you could do that after you buy the laptop, as sometimes people just realize they need more RAM or storage after using a laptop for several years. With an Apple laptop you're just out of luck in those cases, the only thing you can do is sell it and buy a new one. Same story with the hard drives or almost any other component. I don't think that the reason they do this is to make the laptops 1-2 mm thinner, I think it's just economically way more interesting to be in a position where your company controls the entire value chain from software to hardware. That's where Apple is headed and it's great for them as a company, for end users it's not so great though. I would really like if the EU restricts this kind of behavior as I think it would be good for Apple users as well.

[cesarb]

> Also, you could do that after you buy the laptop, as sometimes people just realize they need more RAM or storage after using a laptop for several years.

An example of that: when I started working at my current company, the 4GB of RAM I had on my several years old laptop was no longer enough (I could work fine, but it got annoyingly slow when I used the IDE). Since said laptop is a Dell, I just bought a matched pair of 8GB RAM sticks (dual channel, total 16GB), followed the instructions on the repair manual (available as a PDF on the manufacturer website, no login required) to open the back cover, and exchanged the memory. Took me only around an hour, and would have taken only a few minutes if I hadn't insisted on running the full memory test to make sure the new sticks were good (built-in hardware test program, launched from the BIOS, no installation or operating system required).

I some time later used that 4GB stick I had removed from the laptop to upgrade another computer from 4GB to 8GB. That is: even the part I had to remove for the upgrade wasn't wasted.

[_ph_]

Yes and no. I am all for buying the maximum memory you can order for a laptop, but Apple makes this an issue by asking a huge premium for upgrades. And of course, with ssd-storage, there is the question of wear, eventually you would have might have to replace it.