Long time Apple fan here, and yeah. Ugh. Back in the 1980s/1990s you could pop those suckers open and fiddle to your heart’s content. I loved my last MacBook for many years but once it was obsolete there wasn’t anything I could do with it.
At some point I decided the 2012 Mac Mini would be my last Apple machine for now. And although it’s not the only reason, being the last mini you can open and upgrade a bit played a part (I added RAM and an SSD while keeping the original HD with a server kit)
Thanks for mentioning the Marques Brownlee channel. Never heard of him before!
You could upgrade machines into the early 2010s. 10 screws and you’re in on the 2010 MBP. My daily driver is a 2009 MacBook Pro. It’s got 8 gigs of RAM, an SSD and I put them there.
I love working on the older MacBooks. They had great design and engineering. Additionally, you could easily run Linux on them and get another 5+ years of life out of it. Sad they have gone this new route but even sadder they’re selling them like crazy.
Yeah I may be misremembering, but wasn’t it when they made the jump to Retina displays that they started gluing in things like the RAM? My first-gen Intel MacBook (Core 2 Duo) still had discrete components in it.