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Comment by cjensen | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand Apple's aversion to accessible DIMM slots and off-the-shelf M.2 SSDs.

It used to be that Apple charged a lot for RAM and Storage, but you could save a bundle by bringing your own. For example, my 2012 i7 Mac mini has maxed memory and a 2TB SSD. When Apple began soldering stuff in, they failed to reduce their punitive prices on expansion, which really hurts reusability and resale value. In other words, they are far less green than they could be since they must now be disposed of earlier.

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Like any manufacturer, they are trying to bring down the amount of breakage, and removing electrical connectors and mechanical connections is one way to do that. And when you want things to be smaller you don't really have much of a choice anyway.

At the same time, the only reason those slots were there in the first place was so that a manufacturer could build one main board and then offer different configurations by just swapping out some elements. That benefit no longer holds since you can do the same on a single PCB and still offer the same options. The side-effect of users being able to change it after the fact is lost, but when it wasn't a selling point for the manufacturer anyway it doesn't seem to matter to them.

While not ideal for every user, the mass market doesn't really care. They will probably never upgrade a machine in their lifetime and simply 'upgrade' to a different machine instead.

If we're being really honest, it is for profit margins and planned obsolescence.

The electrical and structural design do account for marginal BOM costs but are hardly useful for some evil obsolescence plan. If only because nobody actually 'upgrades' their systems anymore. The mass market hasn't done that for 10+ years.

People often claim a ton of things but then actually don't have any background in the industry (either the engineering side or the high level planning side). Apply Hanlon's Razor instead of making everything that doesn't suit your context automatically be some evil plan.

Of course a company that stands to make a ton of money with a choice between to options that only marginally affect users will choose the ton of money option. It's just that in this case there is no ton of money.

I'll take industry standard lifetimes on dimm and m2 slots if this is the trade off.

I call bullshit on this.

Ask any user if they would prefer an upgradeable device to one that cannot be, they will opt for the upgradeable one.

That is why they were forced to bring back the RAM slots after the failure of Mac Mini 2014 (which had soldered RAM).

Apple does this purely to make more money - they have to spend less on parts if everything is soldered, they can charge an obnoxious amount for more memory and it helps with planned obsolescence.

The current mac mini would sell more if they had user upgradeable SSD. But it is obviously more profitable for Apple to offer soldered one's even if it sells less.

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