That just came out, let's see if it goes anywhere and if they keep pushing it in other products, or if it's just a marketing exercise for one product, but I'm skeptical its here to stay.
I also remember how upgradable GPUs in laptops using MMX slots were pushed by Dell and a couple of others a few times 10-15 years ago, but abandoned each time.
I hope this catches on though, but like I said, I'm skeptical.
>Devil's advocate: sell replacement drop-in boards and reuse the chassis.
Apple's response if regulators push for that: "Sure, that'll be 1600$ for the board please. (on an 1800$ new machine). Oh, and BTW, the board is paired to your iCloud account so you can't then re-sell it on the used market, for your own protection of course. You're welcome."
> Apple, Aramco, your local butcher are merely serving your needs. Aramco ain't forcing you to buy 5L V8 trucks, and you're butcher ain't forcing you to eat beef rather than poultry or vegetables.
Marlboro wasn't forcing you to smoke either, yet too many people did against their own health and own best judgement, so we had to get government regulators to rule them in to protect people form damaging themselves and others with their own desires.
Just because consumers want something, doesn't mean it's what's best for them and that the capitalist free market should just be free to unregulatedly deliver whatever consumers want, at the expense of societal health or the environment, because then that's just "privatizing profits while socializing losses" with extra steps.
We also had governments regulate car emissions to save our air quality which meant engines had to be much more efficient and less environmentally damaging. All for the greater good, and few people complained about the cleaner smog- and tobacco- free air despite loosing a few HP on their engines and Marlboro selling fewer fags.
What makes you think e-waste should be exempt from such regulations?
Devil's advocate: RAM on SOCs is not upgradable due to technical limitations on frequency and latency needing the RAM chips to be as close as possible to the CPU. You can't beat physics.
I do hold them accountable for the non-upgradable SSDs, which are not needed to be soldered to achieve their full speed, and slim PCB connectors for PCI-E speed connections do exist.
>I think the part that was really upsetting is they crushed real good objects. After all of that talks about climate friendly.
Considering how much global e-waste and environmental damage, companies like Apple(and others of their size) are responsible for with their products, destroying a few objects for an ad is like spitting in the ocean in the scheme of things.
People complaining about the waste generated from this ad, are really missing the big picture, and is one of the reason companies like Apple mostly focus on posturing the image of climate friendliness and environmental sustainability, rather than actually enforcing it across their entire supply chain where it actually makes the big difference.
"Sure, the minerals in our devices are mined by kids in Congo with chemicals dangerous for the environment, and assembled by workers in sweatshop factories with suicide nets, but our posh donut-shaped HQ in Cupertino runs on 100% renewables and serves only vegan food with soy lattes, that's how environmentally conscious we are here at Hooli." </gavin_belson.jpg>
^Because this greenwashing is what people buy into from advertising.
Reminds me when Formula 1 switched form V10 engines to hybrid V6 to be more "environmentally friendly", when actually, the gas burned by those V10 engines during races only accounted for <0,2% of the total emissions, being far offset by the massive emissions of transporting that entire circus around the planet bouncing across continents all year round, yet nobody addressed that, just the engines for some cheap greenwashing.
>Just buying a simple tool to load game saves and you could have a soft-modded Xbox in minutes
Because that era Xbox was just a PC built form COTS hardware instead of custom HW. You can still tinker just as well today with a PC, or a PC based console like the Steam Deck, why bother fighting with a proprietary console designed to be locked down? What would you gain? Access to a custom X86 hardware that you can buy for cheap on the market anyway?