Why wait for mid lifecycle? Buy a low-specced machine and the drop in larger storage and memory rather than paying a huge premium to the vendor. It's not about control as much as just saving money.

Mid-lifecycle because saving 10% on an expensive device isn't what most people are interested in when they are buying something to work on.

Yes, people exist that do that or want that or really need to save every cent possible, but to many others that is not even interesting as a thought exercise.

So I referred to mid-lifecycle because those people that initially don't try to go on the cheap usually only did any part swapping because the machine was good enough and swapping machines was too much of a hassle: upgrades made sense.

> On the flip side: does anyone still buy a low-specced machine and upgrade it mid-lifecycle?

I've upgraded hard drives and RAM on very single Mac I've ever owned, except the last Mac I purchased, a 2015 MBP, where it wasn't an option.

It's looking like this one will be literally the last Mac I purchase. Apple's practice of charging premium, bespoke prices for commodity hardware was insulting, but at least there was a reasonable workaround before they started the soldering crap. Soldering things down is just a brazen money grab.

Can't believe I'm looking at going back to Windows but here we are.

Same here. My 2012 MBP has been upgraded with more RAM and a SSD and the battery is replaceable (but it's lasted better than my work 2017 model and is healthier!) but the cost of the new devices is so astronomical it'll be the last one I buy. Since I will have to invest in a new ARM device just to develop for their new platform, it's goodbye Mac and back to Linux (already got Windows as a side Dev machine).

Apple is making it a pain to do even basic things like replace the battery, which is a consumable part.

I've personally upgraded the hard drive and replaced the battery twice on my old 2011 MacBook Pro.

I have done that on a 2009 as well, but that is a slow machine at this point. I don't think I've used it beyond 2014. I have a 2015 around that I still use and works perfectly fine, but so does the 2018 which is lighter. Neither need upgrades or changes to do they work they are doing.

I did upgrade someone's 2015 in 2018 with a bigger SSD because they needed 2TB and it wasn't available at that time (they were on 512) and they used it as a local buffer for footage before offloading. Because they only have USB3 or TB3 drives and no TB2 drives, the multiple transfers on that MBP are too time consuming to do in the field.

Why does it have to be low-spec? I bought my current laptop with 16GB of RAM in it (soldered to the mainboard, sadly) because that's the most the manufacturer offered at the time. If I had the option today, I'd open it up and swap out the modules for 32GB. (I think they now offer a 32GB model.)

Ditto for the storage; I have 512GB in there now (probably wasn't the max when I bought it, but seemed sufficient and was a good price trade off), but I wouldn't mind swapping it out for a 1TB part. Actually, this bit might be possible to do myself; I should look into it.

Apple usually has a large premium to upgrade the specs. If you can change your own memory or SSD you could save a considerable amount. But now they are soldering everything.

That is only something people take issue with because it used to be modular. You don't see people making the same argument with phones, printers, iPads, TVs, Cars, Smartwatches etc.

I'm not saying soldering things down is ideal, but it's only a problem because people perceive an option that was there but now isn't as 'bad faith' or 'taking away' something. Imagine the riots if we used to be able to change the CPU in a laptop. (in theory we 'used' to be able to but in practise that never worked well because the microcode didn't fit in the firmware and the cooling solution only takes a small amount of TDP variance - popping in a faster CPU meant it overheated so quickly it was useless)

Would it be cool if all devices were composable? Sure. Is it something users care about? Not really.

I'd like it if Apple found a way to allow swapping of components within the design envelope constraints they create d for themselves, but it also won't have an impact on what I'd buy.

> does anyone still buy a low-specced machine and upgrade it mid-lifecycle?

Yes, they do. Sometimes a technology like SSD itself gives a great boost in performance equivalent to a new costlier system.

I’ve certainly bumped up the RAM in the past.