Soldered RAM is faster than socketed RAM. What's faster still is Apple's current approach: putting the RAM inside the CPU chip package. This is one of the reasons why Apple Silicon chips are so screamingly fast and handily beat any x86 chip core-for-core.

> to the increasing annoyances of macOS either in the name of security (e.g., notarization, the popups that request permission to read user directories, which is really annoying when using LLVM's debugger in modern macOS)

These help prevent malicious software, such as downloaded apps or even web pages, from exfiltrating or tampering with user data. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1200/