his is about adding memory on a Dell 9310: "No, you can't. All Dell XPS 13 9310 models have a soldered memory". Fact is RAM hardly every fails over the life of the machine anymore.
All machines with LPDDR RAM have soldered-in memory, it's a constraint of LPDDR. However, with PCs we're usually talking about ultra-slim laptops which you'd expect to be harder to upgrade than desktops, which usually have upgradeable DDR4 DIMMs. Apple, with the M1, is fairly unique in using LPDDR RAM and soldered-in SSD in
desktops.
As for SSD, there's no excuse for non-socketed SSDs on desktops, even if it is proprietary Flash-only modules rather than standard M.2. because M1/T2. Unlike RAM, SSDs can "wear out" over time and are more likely to fail than other components, so they should at least be replaceable, if not upgradeable.
"You should pay 2X or 3x times the normal price with our configuration." No doubt that some options are overpriced, but isn't everyone tired of the comparison to fast SSDs and fast ram to slow ram or the cheap slow SSds Dell uses and say "see, Apple is expensive".
Nonsense. A high-spec, not-at-all-rubbish, M.2 PCIe 4, x4 (5000 MB/s write, 7000 MB/s read) SSD blade
costs £155 for 1TB (including the controller) - Apple want £200
for an extra 256GB on a Mac Mini.
(If you want $ prices, just cross of the £ and write $ and you're on the right cricket pitch - the UK prices include 20% tax & are generally a bit inflated c.f. US, which pretty much cancels out the $/£ exchange rate)
That Dell you mentioned uses the same class of LPDDR4x/4267 RAM as the Apple M1 - yet Dell want £50-£100 for the 8 to 16GB upgrade (...on the Dell UK website, various options are entangled so you have to upgrade to 16GB then downgrade to 8GB to get the like-for-like price comparison) whereas Apple want £200.
LPDDR4x RAM prices are tricky to compare since they're not a consumer item and tend to cost "$call" - but this is even a thing with Macs that use bog standard DDR4 DIMMS which you
can compare with retail versions from Crucial etc. and it's long been Apple's standard $200 per extras 8GB vs. about $40 per 8GB from Crucial et. al. - and when I upgraded my Intel iMac to 24GB (for considerably less than Apple wanted for an upgrade to
16GB) the Crucial DIMMs were exactly the same "Micron" brand as the 8GB that Apple installed (not surprising - Crucial are just the retail arm of Micron and there's only a small handful of companies actually making RAM).
Apple also low-balls the base spec - with current RAM and SSD prices, it's ludicrous for premium machines to come with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD as standard - it would be false economy but for Apple's ability to get away with their silly upgrade prices. It's also a major pain for anybody who can't buy custom configs direct from Apple.
In fact the SSds can be swapped with the same size SSds (as others have demonstrated) from another Mac Studio. so we will probably see options down the road a bit.
True, but
so far Apple have said that upgrades are not possible - and unless Apple enables it via their configurator software, they have the last word.
People are porting Linux, after all MACOS is built on Linux to begin with. Why Microsoft doesn't want to release ARM versions of Windows (Well, I don't care, because Windows sucks), but they could if they chose.
Ok, but first, as
@TiggrToo points out, MacOS isn't "built on Linux" - it's Unix-like, with a custom kernel and a BSD-based "userland". If you want a "Un*x-like" environment then MacOS is great - and way better than Windows - and most common Unix/Linux software has been patched to build and run with MacOS - but if you
actually need Linux then you need Linux, and if you're doing web/server development it's most convenient to use the same Linux distribution (Ubuntu etc.) that you are targeting. That said, Linux for ARM is pretty well-developed - probably better than Windows for ARM, and Linux/Unix is built around source-code compatibility rather than Windows' insane levels of backward-compatibility with binaries - and runs fine under virtualisation on M1. Asahi Linux (native Linux on Apple Silicon) is looking exciting, but is a long way from being "production ready".
As for Windows - the status quo seems to be that MS will happily take your money for a Windows-on-ARM license and it seems to activate and run quite happily on a M1 using Parallels, but if it breaks you get to keep both pieces... and if you need to run x86 Windows Apps they'll still only be emulated.
MacOS is based upon BSD, which is a Unix derivative. BSD was out long before Linus Torvalds probably even touched a computer keyboard.
...of course, to be pedantic, Linux is a
kernel not an operating system, just as MacOS's kernel is
XNU and the bits that make it a full operating system (notably the GNU tools and the X Window GUI, bits of BSD and SysV too) also long predate Linus Torvalds' work. (nb: the BSD compatibility layer was an optional add-on with early versions of OS X)
"MacOs
is Unix but Linux
isn't Unix" is a fun fact, but a bit irrelevant now that "Linux" is pretty much becoming the de-facto standard for "Un*x-like operating systems" and "Unix(tm)" is just a commercial validation/branding scheme (which Linux could easily qualify for if it weren't at odds with GPL licensing). Heck, Windows was Posix compliant at one time....
Anyway, MacOS's BSD layer is sufficiently different from Linux's GNU/SysV-ish nature to be annoying if you're switching between them.
