A Porsche is probably a weird example. I'm assuming the put the engine there for some specific reason like increasing traction on the rear wheels that only really makes sense in a sports car. The performance gain justifies making maintenance more difficult.

The majority of cars are FWD and stick the engine in the under the hood where it's easy to get at because practicality is more important.

Right, and Macs are optimized for performance and physical aesthetics, not practical servicability. Sound familiar?

I really don't buy that argument. The "optimized for performance" statement is pretty much a marketing ploy to downplay Microsoft (who doesn't make hardware, but that's changing).

The only argument here is for the GPU. Apple has put in a lot of work to maximize usability by targeting a specific GPU/CPU combo. RAM is a constant that doesn't really play into the design of the OS, since all RAM manufacturers make the same thing, but with different guarantees.

RAM is about the easiest thing to upgrade, second maybe to a hard-drive. This used to be trivial to upgrade, but now they're making it unnecessarily difficult to lock in customers to paying out the nose for something that should be a simple and cheap upgrade. They're operating on insane margins in the RAM arena (and CPU arena, but that's a different story).

Not sure what the performance or aesthetic improvement would be in this case?

Why the superior weight distribution greatly improves handling of course. How else could Macs feel so snappy?

"Welding the hood shut" is just an imprecise way of saying "rendering the vehicle unserviceable by 3rd parties." The actual location of the engine is a pointless tangent.

In fact there are attempts to limit the serviceability of cars, and these attempts are harmful to independent mechanics.