[musicale]

> extremely overpriced tiering (e.g. adding storage or RAM

As I understand it, Apple uses a "system in a package" multi chip module that mounts RAM inside the same package as the main M1/M2 SoC.

Seems to work well in terms of memory bandwidth, unified memory architecture, and physical size, but it's hard to crack that SIP/MCM open to add more RAM.

And it's even harder to add RAM to an SoC die itself. And the GPU is integrated as well (although in theory one could connect an eGPU over Thunderbolt - assuming the driver issues could be sorted out somehow.)

Some old Macs from the 1990s included an external L2 cache SRAM slot. But cache RAM upgrades became impossible once the L2 cache was integrated on the CPU die.

[goosedragons]

Even on the remaining Intel models having Apple upgrade the RAM is a bad deal. The Intel Mac Mini has socketed RAM and they want $1000 for 64GB of DDR4 2666. You can get 64GB DDR4 3200 sodimms for less than $200 right now. Even in 2018 it was a bad deal. I put 32GB in the one I had for less than a third the price Apple was asking.

And for storage that isn't on the SoC, it's just flash chips on the board so it shouldn't be much different cost wise to what the M.2 drive manufacturers are paying. Yet it costs considerably more.