Not all the people can change their RAM properly, but is this a valid reason to take that option away in all?
If you didn't know, macs are the pickiest computers in the market considering RAM. This might be intentional, since Apple want's you to buy ram from them and if you do, they can tune the mac work optimally with just certain specs and not with wide variety like "pc's". Ever noticed that with other computers than Apple's, you can change ram's timing parameters in the BIOS, to make them work faster or more reliable.
3rd party memory makers usually have specific models for every mac. Those RAMs are pretty much guaranteed to work fine. If people buy whatever modules without finding out if it fits, you will find them in the forums complaining. Of course this wouldn't be a problem, if Apple designed macs to work in same way than rest of the industry regarding ram.
Always even being knowledgeable doesn't help. When I bough more ram to my mp in 2007, 3rd party ram (Kingston) worked just fine by itself, but not with "original" (Hynix) mp's ram. Funny, it was cheaper to replace original memory with new one, than buy additional memory from Apple.
Well people might remember 17" mbp as bulky, but the fact was that it was as thin (WOW!) as 15" and weighted only 450g (=less than one pound) more.
I meant that even corporations change their hardware every 3 or 5 years, there's no reason why individual user couldn't use a computer for 6 or 7 years. Needs vary and so do the machines. Powerful desktop for 3D or video editing is just fine for lighter tasks when it gets old. And now in case of Apple, freelance visual artist might need to change MP just after 2 years. So there's no "one lifetime for all computer/macs" that we all should follow.
That was just a counter-argument to the opinion that because so few people can upgrade ram by themselves, it shouldn't be done at all (ie. soldered ram). This evolves to hypothetical imaginary guesses, that even if Apple Store upgrades your ram with Apple branded sticks, there's still (one-in-a-million) change that your ram does not work as good as soldered.
Well, cars are starting to be like macs now... Not funny, but neither justifies the other.
Times change.
Even when Apple has no longer any significant value for exclusivity for osX, it won't give/sell/license it away. In the past it was said that Apple needs to keep exclusivity to osX, because Apple is a hardware company, but nowdays Apple gets more and more of their income from non-physical products and most of physical products they sell does not use osX...
Already did. Not that would matter. I guess that shrinking mini to entry level was decided sometimes in 2011, when they designed to release next minis without dGPU.
"In the old days" there was balance between quality and price. Now both can be whatever and high quality is getting more expensive all the time, since average Joe just looks the price and mass market product's cost is minimized to the end. This lifespan optimizing has gone so far, that when fractions of cents can be saved, may lead even "the developer of highest quality" to problems:
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/08/21/lawsuit-2011-macbook-pro-graphics/