[faeriechangling]

Desktop PC sales are in freefall and were stagnant years before that.

Laptops nowadays are about ~2 years behind mainstream desktop platforms and are now capable of serving the needs of most gamers, video editors, and programmers. Consumers, prosumers, and businesses are increasingly are asking themselves why they should give up the flexibility of a laptop and dedicate valuable space to a traditional desktop setup. From the business perspective, laptops are also logistically easier to deploy.

The biggest ways I've seen upgradability used is to deal with HDD failures, which are several times less likely than they were ten years prior. To deal with running oom, which is far less of an issue because swapping to SSD isn't as profound of a performance hit. To deal with running out of disk, which you can compensate for with cloud storage. To deal with running out of compute, which can be dealt with using cloud compute. It should also be said that an alternative to upgrading a component is to just sell the entire machine and get a new one, even if this might be less efficient, it's still an option.

One might say "but aha - doesn't an upgradable laptop give you the best of both worlds?" but being honest a framework is not a better value or better performer for most users than a 8gb MBA even if you can slap in 32gb of memory and a 1tb drive into a framework for cheap. The integration of the MBA offers unique benefits when it comes to battery life and performance, and just the fact that TSMC n5 is only available on an integrated laptop is really a huge if artificial competitive edge for integrated laptops.

I don't really see repairability coming back if I'm going to be honest, I see the laptop of the future being harder to repair not easier.