Trending that way, yes.
RAM: the iOS memory model relies on being able to stop/start apps fast, requiring less RAM. This behavior is drifting into desktop territory.
Storage: "cloud" storage is reducing the need for local storage. As this takes hold, users will be less compelled to purchase big drives to mitigate the "device full" problem. Google wants to store everything, all versions, for you forever; Apple wants to ensure at least one copy is on one of your devices; Amazon is offering serious archiving. Need space? clear an app, you can download it again later; cache old data to the cloud.
Upgradability: most users never upgrade. If they do, it's memory as a stopgap. The price of computers in real value is dropping; an entry-level IBM PC was about $6000 in today's dollars, with inferior performance to today's $25 Raspberry Pi, and about a millionth of the capability of a rMBP. As such, and with continuing improvements, it just makes more sense to replace than upgrade in most cases.
Repairability: components, when optimized to the degree that Apple's are, have become so specialized and expensive that it's likewise becoming feasible to just replace the whole thing. Instead of decking out a great many repair shops, Apple can/will "repair" your epoxy block by just copying data storage onto a new unit and hand that to you, and send that block back to a central high-efficiency repair facility - that's an enormous improvement of the repair supply chain.
All these signs are just planned obsolescence and even they are "in fashion" does not mean they are in any way good or desirable.
Nevertheless when treating something "old fashioned" is just plain trick to sell something similiar or even worse from your own production.
ODD is "dead" because you should buy things from iTunes.
Expandable storage is "so last year" when "the insanely cool thing" is to buy Time Capsule for your time machine backups.
Etc.
My sediments exactly. A dismishing population of optical media users demanding the rest of us be forced to buy an obsolete feature so the minority doesn't have to be inconvenienced. I can't, for the life, of me understand how people can be so narrow minded. "I want it therefore EVERONE wants it." - what a ridiculous arguement.
I've not been using optical for a while. I was disappointed when my 2009 iMac still had one - how archaic. I haven't bought software on physical media in like 8 years or more.
For the record - I work for a large company, and I see NO ONE exchanging optical media. Email, network sharepoints, VPN...worst-last-case is on USB drive, and that's a rarity. AND my daughter is in college, and if her assignments are accepted electronically, its via email, never removalable storage.
This.
Maybe you are not working with visual things too big for email or with people that don't spend huge amounts to IT infrastructure.
Maybe you don't understand that most of bought digital content on this planet is still in optical media and will be for years.
And when some day electrical distribution overcomes, there's still majority of people, who don't want to buy same content again in another format. Most not-geeky people I know are not buying online movies they already have on dvd and/or throw those "archaic" dvd's to trashcan or they don't want to have all the trouble to rip them to hdd or cloud and to the other one for backup, since they already have those movies on their shelf and they don't have to do anything to them.
I just don't get how people think that if their computer has some feature they don't use, it would be somehow better if the feature is taken off. I can understand that many people want their laptops as light as possible, but taking away features from desktops is never ending game. You can always find features that somebody don't use. And continuing to make products "simplier" all the time will some day make a gap between what user wants too wide.
Surprisingly Apple corrects their mistakes from time to time. Archaic firewire was put back, when they started loosing sales. Hdmi was installed when fighting against it didn't succeed.
I just hope someday we will have a real xMac and a laptop with real modularity and expandability. Giving these options doesn't mean most of us would have to use them. 17" matte retina screen would be nice with expresscard slot even with thunderbolt with amazing prices and availability.
Also maybe it could be possible to have a headless mac with discreet GPU with less than $2k price?
How an earth ODD in imac would make it worse than one without it?
Do you also need to use every socket on the back?
Having nightmares of not using the whole storage, RAM & cpu cycles you could?
Looks like Apple's products are now only for people who need to think if un-cool features make their computer bad. I'm used to think that computers are just technical tools, but maybe I need to consider again...
