> Apple clearly don't believe the marginal profit hit involved in appealing to nerds is required to maintain their market position. Considering that the period

> Apple clearly don't believe the marginal profit hit involved in appealing to nerds is required to maintain their market position. Considering that the period over which they went from laying on their deathbed to becoming one of the most highly-valued companies in the world falls entirely within the period over which they started making these kinds of design changes, they'd have to be downright stupid to believe otherwise. But for the sake of unpacking that idea anyway, let me advance that what's really going on is that they don't believe that the wallet of a nerd who is fundamentally opposed to the basic idea behind their business model in the first place isn't really worth chasing after. Apple deciding not to solder RAM to the motherboard because it might make their computers slightly less unappealing to a certain class of nerd makes about as much sense as your local butcher deciding to stop carrying veal in an effort to get more vegans to come through the door. Besides, I'm not convinced that RAM soldered to the board is a real practical complaint so much as yet another lightning bolt for an ideological grudge (I can't help but note the phrase "church of Apple"). We don't see the same griping about how the Raspberry Pi's RAM is soldered to the board. This even though it's a computer that, unlike the iMac, is specifically made for us tinkerers.