Except by most all regards that product is great.
And Apple is effectively committing to supporting 8GB computers with their OS upgrades for years to come.
This model only has 8gb of RAM — which is fine for streaming videos/typing — it absolutely could not be my daily driver, but makes for good casual usage.
Machines probably should ship with more than that (or a lighter operating system?), particularly when the RAM isn't upgradeable. I'll recon Apple supports at least two more macOS on these 8GB configurations.
My favorite machine only has 4GB of RAM (Core2Duo Max, Win7Pro) and works good, albeit nothing modern.
1. It's TSMC's InFO_POP, which has significant performance benefits.
2. There weren't even any modules that existed for LPDDR until very recently. (and while the A18 was being designed, it didn't exist)
3. The power/price/performance/thermals they are able to achieve with this configuration is not possible with socketed RAM. You are asking them to make the device worse
Go pop open a Framework with an Ryzen AI Max processor -- you won't find socketed RAM. Technology has moved on. Math coprocessors and CPU cache aren't separate modules anymore either. AMD has even said they studied the possibility of LPCAMM for Strix Halo and found that even it wasn't good enough for signal integrity.
I'd argue that if memory and storage were still customer-expendable, they wouldn't have even considered making this product.