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by lostgame 1471 days ago
No amount of security or performance benefits can outweigh even the environmental/eWaste disaster alone that non-upgradable RAM chips/storage and lack of user replaceable batteries are responsible for.

Then there’s the cost thing. Have 8GB of RAM in your MacBook and want 16GB? Whoa, boy; that’ll cost you. That old computer’s pretty useless now, and we go right back to the eWaste problem.

Soldered RAM/storage/batteries are the epitome of greed in technology.

They prioritized the customer purchasing a whole new product over simply upgrading one component; creating a literal never-ending shit-stream of eWaste and products increasingly designed to stay properly functional for less time.

The law chases them; and instead of getting the message and smartening up; they find loopholes to get out of it.

There’s no excuse. It’s greed.

EDIT: More importantly - can we please stop making excuses for these greedy assholes, and start collectively working on change?

We need to start focusing on the planet, and this is a super easy start.

1 comments

So do you throw away perfectly good laptops - creating e waste - instead of just selling them and using the money to buy a new one?
The problem is that because they can't be upgraded, they are no longer 'perfectly good'.

I recently was donated a 2010 MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM, and a paltry 128GB SSD.

What the hell is anyone supposed to do with that?! If the RAM wasn't soldered to the board I could probably at least upgrade it to 8GB and someone could at least use it for email and Facebook.

So I don't really get your point.

My original point is that these laptops are not perfectly good anymore - but if I could pop that 2010 Air with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, it could be useful for someone. A student, maybe. Boot it with Windows and you'd probably even be able to run a more recent OS.

I have an old Dell Laptop from 2010 (Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz) with 4GB of RAM that ran Windows 10 as a Plex Server for years. With Macs of that era, you could stick a Windows 10 DVD and install it without any issues.

Pre-Covid (2019), my mom was using my old 2006 era Mac Mini with 1.25 GB of RAM running Windows 7 when she use to tutor. It was good enough to run Chrome and access Google Docs.

A 2010 laptop isn’t “perfectly good”. If the only reason you needed to upgrade to a Mac that was running a supported operating system was because you needed more RAM, you could get money back by selling it. The resell value of a 2010 MacBook - or any other computer is practically nil.