The reason is the same: space. Not having standard physical interfaces to plug hardware in represents a huge gain in space. For instance, if the MacBook had a

The reason is the same: space. Not having standard physical interfaces to plug hardware in represents a huge gain in space. For instance, if the MacBook had a standard SSD, it would need the following: - A SATA controller chipset on the motherboard - The physical connector on the motherboard - The physical connector on the SSD - A SSD controller designed for SATA - Maybe even a plastic enclosure on some laptops Instead, Apple can use a lower-level interface, embed the flash controller and directly put the NAND cells on the motherboard. That's two chips.