There is a technical reason for integrating the RAM into the CPU package. Having it very close coupled does allow for very tight timing. Some other manufacturers solder in RAM too, particularly on AMD laptops where SO-DIMM sockets would limit the maximum RAM speed and thus the performance of the CPU as well. The performance hit isn't huge, in fact in workstation/productivity tasks it's basically zero, but in synthetic benchmarks and a few games it is noticeable.

Apple's Mx chips need a lot of memory bandwidth and as low latency as possible. Partly because they share it with the GPU, and partly because the ARM architecture just needs more than AMD64.

But of course it was a choice for Apple to do it that way. They could have used a different architecture, the could have traded some performance for RAM sockets, or they could have switched to AMD whose CPUs are better than Intel's.

And there is no excuse for soldered in SSDs.

I mean zero competition for Mac RAM. You can't upgrade it, you can only buy more RAM direct from Apple at the time of purchase.

On an Mx Mac? The RAM is integrated into the CPU chip package, and the SSD is flash chips soldered to the motherboard.

Apparently you can upgrade the SSD with a proper SMD rework station, but it's expensive and difficult work, involving BGA parts.

It's upsell. Back when you could upgrade it, a lot of people would just pay Apple prices to avoid the hassle of finding compatible RAM and dealing with potential warranty issues arising from/with it. Keep the base price low for the headlines, so people are interested and can talk themselves into the upgrade.

Nowadays you can't upgrade the RAM, or the SSD, so there is even more pressure to take the upgrade. Apple have zero competition so the prices are ridiculous.

Safari isn't magically efficient. It just unloads stuff you are trying to use, and then reloads it when you switch to that tab again. If the delay is tolerable to you, fine. It's slower than not unloading and reloading, and in any case Chrome has an option (enabled by default) to do exactly the same thing when there is memory pressure on the system.

The real problem with 8GB Macs is that they can never, ever be upgraded. If you could upgrade them when your needs increase, no problem. But you can't, and the same goes for the pathetic 256GB of SSD you get on the base model.

Maybe their contribution will be an IKEA Esabnom flat-pack moon base.

Japan is already providing the rover, probably a modified Toyota Tank Custom G-T that runs on hydrogen. Sadly they didn't offer toilets though.

There used to be peace between those two groups, before Israel existed. The problem is Zionism, get rid of that and in a fairly short space of time things will improve dramatically.

Of course many of the residents of the occupied territories will have to leave in the short term, maybe forever. Fortunately almost all of them have dual citizenship they can rely on.

Sorry if I came over a bit angry there, I'm just kinda fed up of it. Not least because the same shit is happening in my country, the UK, and "China is worse" seems to make people think it's okay. It's actually illegal to protest in the UK if the protest causes "annoyance", and it's only down to the restraint of the police that there are any protests at all now.

While it is almost impossible to attribute a specific event to climate change or any other cause, looking at the frequency with which these things happen, there is a very clear correlation.

The only way to prove it would be to undo what we did, and see if the frequency decreases. If it doesn't... Well, we cleaned up the planet for nothing.

Trump can't lose. He got all those shares for just lending his name to the project. Didn't have to invest any of his own money.

If it somehow does well, his shares increase in value and he profits. If it fails as it inevitably will, he cashes out early and leaves all the Trump/MAGA fans who bought $DJT hoping for a miraculous recovery.

The issue is that their political/religious standards are unreasonable and do harm to their kids and other people.

Not wanting their kids to know about anything LGBTQ related is a good example. Some of those kids will be gay, some will be trans, some will be bi, some will be asexual. And if all they are ever told is that you are what you were assigned at birth and can only be attracted to people of the opposite sex, they are going to think there is something wrong with them and suffer as a result.

And even the ones who aren't LGBTQ are not going to grow up being tolerant of others who are. Familiarity and normalization bring tolerance and acceptance.

So no, those aren't valid criticisms, they are borderline child abuse.

Only old people watch TV news now. It's an inefficient way of getting news, compared to reading a website.

Android apps on iOS should not be a problem. Android is well abstracted from the underlying hardware and OS. Microsoft was able to add Android app support to Windows, for example.

Many of the APIs will map on to iOS ones, and because of the diverse Android ecosystem apps tend to be reasonably good about handling missing APIs or hardware.

Humans tend to be wary of things they are not familiar with or do not understand. For example, they are often scared of cats and dogs, until they get familiar with them and understand that despite the razor sharp claws and powerful bite, they behave a certain way and aren't a serious threat if you are nice to them.

The issue with robots like this one is that they are humanoid but move in unexpected ways. Having no face, you can't read their intent or disposition, or even where their attention is focused.

We may find that for many robots we intentionally limit their range of motions, and add "comfort" features like fake eyes, just so humans are more at ease around them. For industrial applications, it may be a safety issue to have the robot clearly indicate what it is doing and where it is planning to go, and not move in ways that people around it don't expect.

If you want to see some real anti-Semitism, look at how Israel treats ultra orthodox Jews who don't subscribe to Zionism.