Apple’s iconic tower is gone, succeeded by the Mac Studio.
Remember when processors on Apple machines were upgradable, and not soldered to the logic board?
Can’t have that!
I remember, yes.
I never owned one, no. And I’ve owned only Macs since 2003.
Plus an eMate in 1998. Wasn’t with a socketed chip.
Not really sure why it would improve anything. Changing the chip usually meant sticking with the old, slow bus. Which meant the RAM was slow, too.
I did upgrade to more RAM and SSD every chance I got, though. Apple’s RAM upgrade surcharges are ridiculous. Ditto storage.
It would cut down on ewaste and planned obsolescence. I remember upgrading ram, video cards, and processors on many a Mac before they started soldering everything down. Got a lot of life out of my PowerPC and Intel Macs.
I guess? I don’t know. Seems like everything is advancing rapidly, hardware-wise. So when something is long in the tooth, replacing one component doesn’t get you very far. And sockets and slots have performance and cost and space compromises I don’t want to make.
And old systems are still useful.
I tend to own things until they’re completely unusable as intended (5-10 years), then find a second-tier use for them (eg linux server). Then recycle them when even that is untenable.
