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Comment by Corrado | Hacker News Reader

I agree about the upgradability/repairability. However, if you look at like a cell phone maybe it makes more sense. No one has ever complained that you couldn't update the RAM or the CPU in a iPhone. In order to upgrade the hardware of your cell phone you have to purchase another one. I'm guessing Apple is looking at the Mac hardware in the same light. "Want more power? Buy a new laptop!"

The more interesting question is how does this affect the Mac desktops? It would be a shame to throw out a whole Mac Pro machine just because it only has 64GB RAM. Then again, this event did release the Mac Mini, which is a desktop and does not have upgradable RAM or storage or CPU. Hmmmm...

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> I'm guessing Apple is looking at the Mac hardware in the same light. "Want more power? Buy a new laptop!"

How often do phone users actually upgrade their phones for more power? I mostly use my computer to develop software, play video games, and edit media, and stream videos. I mostly use my phone to text, play music, and access the internet.

Almost every PC purchase I've ever made was driven by a need for better performance, but I've never upgraded my phone for that reason. I've upgrade my phone for a better screen, a better camera, a bigger battery, software support, new hardware features (4G, biometrics, USB-C, etc)... but never because I felt like I needed a faster processor or more system memory.

The iPhone has a very smooth process of upgrading the phone. You turn on the new iPhone next to your old one, it prompts and voila. It's like upgrading hardware of your current phone.

I'm unsure if we're at a point where these things are even feasible. e.g I have configured my MBP a lot, the .zsh file, home directory and endless configuration.

I would not be surprised if they ditch the kernal completely, and make everything an App (much like chromebook)

You can do something similar with Macs. Using Migration Assistant I was able to transfer all my data (.zsh, git repos, configs, Docker containers, everything.) Took less than an hour. In fact, I did this because I needed to upgrade my RAM

Yup, did this when I upgraded from a 2013 MacBook Air to a 2018 MacBook Pro. Everything worked great except for homebrew, which unfortunately had to be nuked and re-installed; but I can't really blame Migration Assistant for that.

I thought, the parent comment was talking about hardware upgrade on the same laptop.:)

I don't know about the new model but the 2018/2020 MacMini does have upgradeable memory.

iMac as well.

Also, the previous Mac Mini has 64G max memory and not the laughable 16G.

I think that is a good observation, perhaps at some point the motherboard becomes the swappable part?

Unlikely, it'll be as expensive as just buying a new one and it's unlikely Apple would offer full motherboard replacements easily.

It could be done but companies rather want you to buy a complete computer again and again. Same with cars. That way they sell more stuff and earn more. With proper environmental marketing tricks like the recent one with chargers and recycling robot lies, environmental impact is hidden.

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