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> the only advantage of SODIMMs I see are in repairability.

Another advantage is that you don't have to buy ram from the OEM. I can buy 64GiB of ddr5 for <$150. Apple wants $400 for 64GiB.

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Non-soldered RAM also means that I can also take advantage of the general trend of declining prices instead of having to pay top dollar for maximum configurations upfront. For example, 32 GB is plenty for a laptop for me in 2023, but my needs may change in 2025 or 2026, especially as memory requirements tend to increase over time. Thus I could get 32 GB of RAM today and then upgrade to 64 GB in a few years, when it would probably be cheaper. I’ve done this many times before: my 2006 MacBook shipped with 512 MB of RAM and a 60 GB hard drive. Three years later I upgraded to 2 GB of RAM and a 320 GB hard drive, and the price I paid for these upgrades was much lower in 2009 than it would have been in 2006, especially if I had to get the upgrades from Apple. Sadly being able to perform gradual upgrades hasn’t been an option for Apple laptops in a long time, and this practice is spreading to PCs.

One of the main reasons I didn't buy a new Macbook pro.

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