All this discussion about the advantages of soldered RAM makes me wonder how desktop CPUs will evolve in the future.
We're already in a time where basically 2 sizes of RAM makes sense for DDR5 (32 or 64 GB), at least for consumer desktops.
Now imagine if intel and AMD moved to an "embedded" CPU design where you buy the whole CPU+RAM block to be slotted into the motherboard, kinda like GPUs are made where you have a reference design and board partners make their own version with the chips sourced by AMD/intel.
The RAM slots could be replaced by SSDs, secondary expansion memory or other similar stuff.
Because of this, hardware would be half more expensive then it already is.
You forget that apple charge a certain tax - and if you buy a phone, it's usually a 100$ more for just 64GB / 128GB of storage extra.
There's equipment already having memory on the same chip, such as the PS3 GPU.
Apple makes CPU's quite efficient - and to be honest, i really was suprised after having to replace the Macbook 13 inch battery - to find a board the size of a shoe:
That is packing everything - from CPU to Memory and Graphics. And fits in between the screen and battery.
It was a tough job to actually accomplish since it was my first mac's battery replacement. But geezus the super tiny screws at the size of avg flees n stuff.
Apple has some very skilled engineers.