The 2018 Mini compared to the 2012 and 2014 is a royal pain in the ass to work on. Just scan this forum on DIY'ers who have had issued attempting a memory upgrade. I can easily within a few minutes upgrade my memory and M2 storage card just by removing 1 screw.
My 2012 Mini had much easier access to the memory slots. How hard would it have been for Apple to design the motherboard so that the memory slots would have been on the bottom just like the 2012 Mini? They chose NOT for financial reasons. The same goes for the soldered SSD storage. Sure soldered SSD will be somewhat faster than an M2 storage card but is it worth it? The ThinkCentre boots Windows 10 within 7 secs. If Apple had used an M2 non-proprietary storage card that was user replaceable would the average 2018 Mac Mini user care if macOS booted in 6 sec or 10 secs? I bet most objective individuals would take the extra few seconds to boot macOS. I sure as hell would but Apple decided against that.
Here's the issue I have with Apple and their OS. The claims that macOS is just perfectly awesome and that Windows and Linux sucks. And yet I am more impressed with Linux and Windows because they have to work on billions of different configurations around the world and both operating systems do a hell of a job in stability. Apple just has to concentrate on their hardware and that's it. And the rub is, macOS which I have been using 2001 when it was OS X has had it's share of bugs, quirkiness and with some releases, performance issues. So yeah, maybe it's for the best that Apple doesn't code for anything other than it's own hardware. But if they could, I agree with you that they wouldn't because there's NO incentive to pay for a Mac when you can buy a similar configuration for less from another PC maker.
Apple put the DRAM slots inside the Mac mini for two reasons - 1) The frequency is much higher now with DDR4-2666MHz versus DDR3-1600MHz and the higher clock speed may interfere with certain electronic equipment in the same or nearby bands, and 2) to help cool the DRAM by placing it inside the chassis allowing the air drawn in to take some of the heat away with it. This is also why I think they put the metal cage around it, to shield the frequencies and wick away the heat. Replacing the DRAM is more involved than the 2010-2012 Mac mini, but its not impossible and, frankly, you are going to do it once,
maybe twice, in the mini's lifetime, so I am not sure what the big deal is...if a person is capable and takes their time, they should be fine. If a person is not capable, they should be able to find someone to do it for them for a nominal cost.
If they had
really done this for financial reasons, then you would be forced to BTO soldered DRAM at the time of purchase.
Could Apple's BTO prices be better for DRAM from the factory? Yes, they could, but they aren't. It is what it is. That said, I will take soldered storage any day over soldered DRAM, if given a choice.
As for the soldered storage, I personally would be happier if Apple had taken the proprietary slot standard they used in the 2016-2017 nTB MacBook Pro or 2017 iMac Pro and had made the storage unsoldered as they did with the iMac Pro, which also has the T2. If they licensed the spec to a couple of companies who could make authorized 3rd party upgrades, that would be great, but it is not a dealbreaker for me or a lot of other users.
The reality is that Apple is not going to put an m.2 slot in any of its Macs, and frankly, I don't blame them. Like it or not, good or bad, Apple is trying to provide a consistent user experience. It also needs to keep support costs in line to an extent. Having to support any old m.2 module that someone decides to stick in their Mac is going to be a tech support nightmare.
Did the consumer buy a SATA module by mistake, an AHCI PCIe m.2, an NVMe m.2, from which manufacturer...is the driver an Apple driver, or the manufacturer or does it need a third party driver, a la SoftRAID? What is the upside of this? To allow tinkerers, of which most people are not, to be able to upgrade their machines? Why? truly, how often does the average user upgrade those items in the lifetime of their computer? Once, maybe twice?
If you are trading components out any more frequently than every 9-12 months, I would posit that you are no longer in Apple's crosshairs as a customer. Even professionals who want a modular Mac Pro and truly use their Mac Pro day in and day out to make money are not trading out components any more often than every 6 months or so, and the vast majority of that would only be storage and/or DRAM. If you are a "Pro" who is doing it more often than that, you are a tinkerer, or a hardware tester, or a YouTube'er, or you just like building and tearing down, but you are not Apple's core customer and that's okay for you and for Apple.
Apple has iOS, macOS, tvOS and WatchOS to develop, add features, bug fix and add value to each by making them interoperate well together. Is there another company that has five distinct hardware lines, with 4 distinct operating systems to develop, support, et al. in the Linux world? Not that I can think of, not that are commercially viable, have mass market appeal, are the foundation of hundreds of millions of devices and are released on an annual cadence. Ditto Microsoft...they don't even have a mobile device OS, they gave up on the Smartphone market and instead simply poured everything into Windows to try and make it fit every device type from 2-In-1 to gaming PC to business desktop to laptop to all-in-one. Good for them.
Apple is never going to try and compete in the PC market or with other PC makers (Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, et al.) as that would be an incredibly idiotic thing to do...the margins are razor thin, OEMs are dependent on a third party to develop the operating system, their product lines are monolithic and not diverse in the least, they try to cater to every corner of the market from the cheapest of the cheap to Fortune 100 companies and workstation buyers because the competition is so cutthroat, they hang on to legacy tech forever for fear of upsetting customers and losing a sale because they dare remove the VGA port to make the laptop thinner or lighter...allowing customers to dictate design and technologies that gain traction in the marketplace not by innovation, but by cost and the lowest common denominator.
I will take my chances with Apple hardware and macOS....I could care less if it takes one screw or twenty to upgrade the computer, I just need it to work and I don't have time to waste jollying Windows or Linux along to get simple things working. If that's your jam, that's fine. To each his or her own.
