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Patient_Fox_6594 t1_jds0wfr wrote

Reply to comment by Doughymidget in My Aunt’s GE Spacemaker Coffeemaker from 1988, used nearly everyday since by ME5SENGER_24

Cheaper to solder them in, also helps with thinness. Buy a Framework laptop, possibly. But people that buy Mac seem to want brand cachet mostly. Longevity is just one product factor, and it's pretty low on many people's checklists, and they won't pay for it on purpose.

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BoilerButtSlut t1_jds3m37 wrote

Listen to this person, because this is exactly right.

Consumers *say* they want long-lasting and durable, but as soon as it's time to open their wallet, they want more features/gimmicks for the price or better aesthetics, or lower price, etc.

There's decades of sales/marketing data that shows this.

This is all consumer-driven. There are high quality versions of everything, and they are consistently low sales, because that market is only like 1% of the population.

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Doughymidget t1_jds1deo wrote

Cheaper than pushing it in?

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Patient_Fox_6594 t1_jds1nt1 wrote

Cheaper than soldering in SO-DIMM or whatever slots and placing the memory in, and designing the board to take the stress of pushing it in. Soldering them in is easier to automate, I'd think, just slap slap slap slap slap plop.

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intermediatetransit t1_jds2zj6 wrote

I would say so, yes. I mean I hate MacBooks personally and the way they no longer support most pc standards, but I have no problems coming up with justifications for their choices beyond ”planned obsolence”.

For instance if the memory is all soldered on there is a lot less to test for, i.e. the device only has a small set of memory sizes and maintaining quality and consistency with those is easier. You also no longer have to provide support for your customers shoving shoddy memory into the device and contacting support when it doesn’t work properly.

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Doughymidget t1_jds86bt wrote

Sure. And every decision is made with multiple factors for and against it. Just having one reason to do something doesn’t mean that another reason couldn’t still be seen as a positive by a company. Again, there is hard proof that it’s been done before, and I don’t think that companies focus on this as a business strategy. But, I think it does exist.

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