I am really not sure how much of the general population would agree with you. Having a slim laptop that I can drop in my bag and not take up the world of space is great.
We are not talking about making laptops not fit into bags. We are talking about not making laptops 9mm thin when they would work better if they were 18mm thin.
I’ll tell you what is noticeable. Typing on an iPhone either worsened or I’m just getting old!
Although for me there are still bigger priorities than size such as I/O, battery, durability and upgradability. But I'll take extra weight over size any day.
My assumption is that it comes down to two end goals.
Replaceable parts to me seem primarily just a one way to reduce long-term cost of the device, with the main alternatives being quality manufacturing so that stuff breaks less and lasts longer, or ability to easily and cheaply replace it if it breaks; and improvements in those areas can remove the need for parts to be replaceable.
And upgradeable parts rely on the notion that it might be efficient to not buy a part now, but buy it later when either it is cheaper or a substantially better version is available. IMHO this capacity was very useful some decades earlier, but not it's substantially less relevant because the technological change is different - we're not seeing RAM prices halve every few years, as it used to be in my youth, and if you get a substantially better technology, that often isn't going to be compatible even if you could physically replace the part, because the better component also requires a newer interconnect standard and a better other component, so moving on to next generation requires replacing most of the system anyway, and the practical benefit from a laptop being made of things you can upgrade is reduced to fixing mistakes in initial specification for storage - and that can also be fully met buy just buying the larger option now - like, being "upgradeable" adds significant complexity and cost overhead (just take a look at the modular, open smartphone projects) and instead of a modular device with 1 foobar of storage with a hope you might upgrade to 2 units later, IMHO it's strictly superior to have a comparable cost non-upgradeable device with 2 units storage right away.
And after all, any device can be upgraded by replacing it - all we're talking about is about cost efficiency, how much people are willing to pay up front to purchase an option that a future upgrade might be cheaper because you could keep some parts of the device.
> all we're talking about is about cost efficiency I am not buying that argument much here. These are 1500+ dollar devices. On the sub 200 dollar range I get it. But on the higher end we are getting integrated stuff where if the track pad eats itself I have to figure out how to glue it back in if I can get the right part.
The angle I would take on this is general repairability: expand the “right to repair” laws, mandate part availability on a long-term, and require everyone to pay for old batteries and parts for recycling so they don’t end up in the general trash stream, even if that means something like baking in a $50 deposit to the price of a new laptop.
I have no desire or need to ever upgrade after that.
Do you want a laptop that's super thin (implicitly not upgradable, expensive to repair)?
Do you want a laptop for which you can replace anything fast and cheap for upgrades or repairs (implicitly thicker)?
1. Do you want a laptop you need to use dongles with? 2. Do you want your laptop where it's more comfortable to type? 3. Do you want your laptop to run cooler and more quiet?
If you can have thin and cool why not? But make sure you don't only consider the former and forget about the latter until you burn your lap.