The difference of course is that in the Deere case, it is a DMCA issue (read legal). Msft is not stopping you in any way from putting the OS that you want on t

The difference of course is that in the Deere case, it is a DMCA issue (read legal). Msft is not stopping you in any way from putting the OS that you want on the device, it is not stopping you from opening the device, it isn't even preventing you from upgrading the device. Now have they made it really difficult to do so because of the design choices they made, yes, absolutely, but they are in no way actually preventing you from doing something with the device. You don't have some inherent right to have a device that is easy to disassemble. And the market absolutely wants this. I've owned probably a dozen laptops over the last 15 years or so and the only upgrade I ever did was to add more RAM. I haven't upgraded a laptop in the last 5 years and I always am sure to purchase my laptop with a healthy set of RAM. These devices (Surface and Macbook) are not trying to compete with the $200 devices. They are trying to capture the top 10%(read: those with disposable income) of the market. Panos Panay, Terry Myerson, and Satya Nadella all didn't sit around figuring out how to screw Lordarminius out of their money. They designed a device that the market wanted. Combine the market wants with the fact that there really is just no need to upgrade/update like we used to even just 10 years ago, and this design choice makes perfect sense. My OG 15" Macbook Retina Pro is still a solid laptop today despite being over 5 years old.