WEBVTT

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have you ever noticed that the starting at configuration always sucks it cheaps

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out on memory and usually has zip all for storage meaning that you're going to

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need to upgrade the thing if you want to keep it useful in the longer term which

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used to be a much smaller problem cuz you could just pick up the base model

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today then upgrade years down the road once your needs have changed and the

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best part is you'd often save a bundle of money doing that thanks to the

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improved affordability of those replacement parts but you can't do that

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anymore RAM and even storage drives are

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being soldered directly onto the main boards of everything from phones to

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laptops forcing consumers to pay today's price Upfront for their hypothetical

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future needs but today's prices aren't even the reason I'm making this video

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you see while there can be consumer benefits to more integrated product

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designs a convenient side effect for

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manufacturers is that whether it's today or tomorrow the only source of otherwise

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commodity upgrades for your system is them which has led to a troubling Trend

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that I really don't think we're talking about enough the complete and utter

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disconnect between market pricing for

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commodity memory and storage chips and the prices that are being charged to

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Consumers by big Brands like apple and Dell prices that we are forced to pay if

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we don't want to be stuck literally forever with a machine that is hamst

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strung by its utterly inappropriate starting

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configuration let's take a look then at how we got here and see if we can come

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up with some ideas for how to fix this going forward and some ideas for a

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message from our sponsor MSI don't just

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check it out at the link below it's only fair for me to begin with the advantages

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of a tightly integrated Hardware design because they are real and in some cases

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provide measurable benefits to a platform let's start with memory have

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you ever wondered why your GPU doesn't have memory slots the same way your CPU

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does I mean they're certainly capable of being equipped with different

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capacities well believe it or not they used to but this practice fell out of

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fashion for a number of good reasons for starters slots or sockets add complexity

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and therefore cost to the board design which will need to be passed along to

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the end user and for what to deal with more compatibility edge cases and user

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error and besides who knows better than the GPU designer what memory

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configuration would be an ideal match both for the onboard processing power

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and for upcoming games all of which is fair enough but the biggest Reason by

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far was performance to address the growing demand for High Fidelity visuals

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gpus needed to be fed with ever faster memory have you ever wondered why your

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GPU memory is laid out like this rather than like like this or like this the

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reason is that the shorter you can keep your traces the connections between your

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graphics processor and its memory chips the stronger the signal and the higher

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you can push your performance and while GPU makers could theoretically just

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cover the board in little sockets for RAM chips the interface pins or the pads

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or whatever they ended up using would ultimately have the exact same effect of

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lengthening the traces that is that they would harm signal integrity and

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therefore real world performance and we can see this exact same thing in action

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in modern ddr5 laptops have you ever noticed that while you can buy ddr5

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sodium sticks they run at much lower speeds compared to systems with lpddr5

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memory soldered to the motherboard we did a whole video about a new memory

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module standard that Dell is proposing to overcome this challenge but the tldr

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is that traditional slotted memory modules suffer from signal Integrity

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issues that prevent them from reaching the same speeds as their non- upgradable

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counterparts and that puts manufacturers who choose to stick with slots at a

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performance disadvantage compared to the ones that don't and this disadvantage

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extends to more than just performance from some quick digging ddr5 slots

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appear to be much more expensive than ddr4 slots adding as much as $8 each to

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the cost of the machine while also taking up valuable internal space that

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could be used for cooling or just to make the device Slimmer and sexier so

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this trend isn't reversing and in fact

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it's accelerating lpddr 5x is coming in

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at speeds of up to 8500 megat transfer per second that is double what we can

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get from a ddr5 sodium and surprise

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surprise it needs to be even closer to the processor in order to achieve these

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speeds with ASUS using a technique that they're calling so or system on module

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to hit 7,467 megatrans per second what's so you

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ask well basically it's exactly what Apple's been doing ever since the

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introduction of their M1 Apple silicon where they took the system memory that

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they were already soldering to the motherboard and moved it onto the same

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package as the processing die which I

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guess is actually a pretty strong argument for integration am I right I

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mean Apple silicon is pretty impressive from a performance and efficiency

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standpoint but here's where I think it becomes

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clear that this whole Trend was never just about performance why is storage

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being soldered down every argument that we've considered for memory the extra

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thickness it adds to the machine the high cost of the interface the

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performance all of it falls apart completely for storage which almost

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exclusively runs over PCI Express in

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modern laptops and while PCI Express

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certainly has its own signal Integrity challenges to overcome over the next

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decade or so it is designed to scale to the data center level and can easily run

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at the distance between a storage chip and the controller on your CPU or S so

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this is where the tinfoil hat comes out a little bit then but hold on don't tune

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out because I think I can demonstrate why I think that this just comes

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straight down to maintaining a monopoly on upgrade parts for your computer all

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we've got to do is follow the money because the profit that can be captured

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by doing this is astounding now apple is

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not the only company to have taken the step of soldering down their storage but

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they are the only one that's Brazen enough to put barriers in place that

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prevent users from upgrading even their non soldered ssds so we're going to be

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picking on them a little bit I want to start by going back to memory Apple

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appears to have decided at some point that 8 GB of memory costs

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$200 that same figure pops up whether we go from 8 to 16 or from 16 to 24 by

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comparison if Apple had heroically charged us a little bit more even for

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our MacBook and added some memory slots the average price we found for a single

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8 gig ddr5 sodum was around $30 at the

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time of recording and even if we assume

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rightly that apple is using premium memory chips and we go with the highest

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price we found that's $60 which is still

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$140 less than what Apple wants for that exact same

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capacity where else in the consumer electronics Industry can you get away

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with a 300% markup oh don't worry we

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found somewhere Let's Talk About Storage

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the SSD in a Macbook is not magic as I

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mentioned before PC Mac they're all

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using the PCI Express bus and the NVMe

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protocol just like the m.2 drive that you would stick to a PC or I mean who

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cares for that matter a PlayStation the only real difference is they built the

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controller for the flash storage chips into their apple silicon rather than

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using a discret one oh and I guess they also limited themselves to two nand

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flash chips while discrete drives can have space for four or more which

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improves capacity at the cost of well

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cost um as with Apple's RAM we can't

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necessarily Source the exact chips they're using for storage but just like

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with the RAM we can bul parket to give you some idea what's going on here The

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Sweet Spot for commodity SSD drives these days then is about 2 tab these

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will cost around $100 and use four 512

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GB nand chips which means the cost to manufacture each of those must be well

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under $25 in Apple's base models they're

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using only a single nand chip you've

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probably seen the stories talking about the reduced storage performance in those

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models as a result of that choice by the way and what that means is that

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upgrading a MacBook Air or a 13-in MacBook Pro to 512 GB is really just

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adding a second 256 GB chip which at the

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current price of around 6 cents a gig is going to set apple back

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$16 if they were paying retail market pricing which they're not then again of

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course neither is the customer that's right Apple wants a whopping

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$200 from you for that extra 256 GB of

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storage that is more than 12 times the

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retail price of that chip integrated into a different prodct I mean that is

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just wow and Apple's not the only one

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doing it the configurator for the Dell XPS 13 2 in1 allows me to go from 512

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gigs to 1 tbte for wait for it

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$150 might look downright reasonable next to Apple especially considering how

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relatively usable that base configur ation is so I don't have to put oh I

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didn't even include this in the script but uh iCloud of course they don't want

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any storage on the machine so you can just pay them monthly for iCloud instead

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okay that's a whole other level to I need my hat back no it doesn't matter

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what matters is that in either case the

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SSD is likely the most profitable component in either of these machines

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which I mean might be worth it if they were doing something super performant or

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they were extra reliable or something that that's what investor disclosure

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framework does where they lay out exactly what model they'll be using so

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you can compare prices and decide if it's worth it but instead Brands like

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apple and Dell are simply putting in whatever they like regardless of the

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performance impact again like we saw with those single chip Macbook ssds so

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then what's the solution here well this is going to sound pretty wild but I'm

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not actually asking Apple to take less margin on their products or even mark up

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their up upgrades less contrary to the

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narrative Apple isn't even an obscenely profitable company they operate at about

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40% gross margin that's a little higher

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than Intel similar to us on LTT Store.com by the way no to Edition

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screwdrivers coming soon sign up for a notification at the link down below and

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actually much lower than others in the technology space like Google NVIDIA and

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Texas Instruments all I'm really asking for is misleading starting app pricing

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to disappear the performance claims that they make are nearly always based on a

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Juiced up config that costs in some cases double or more compared to that

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palatable starting at and all of this is because of those awful starting configs

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that are by Design barely enough for today let alone for 5 years from now and

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because of the ever growing markups on the upgrade parts that can only be

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obtained from the manufacturer so I guess I am asking for them to charge a

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little less for the upgrades and while I'm at it I'm also asking for some

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consideration for the longevity of this Hardware I mean okay okay okay keep the

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configurator prices High most customers aren't going to run out and Source

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upgrade Parts anyway so you might as well profit from them but for the ones

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that do want to swappable components would be a godsend here's a couple ideas

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for how to do it for RAM we'll link the video we did on the cam standard which

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would bring a big improvement over sodiums and even enable modular lpddr

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but even if Cam doesn't take off there's been an interesting uptick in

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enthusiasts who are performing DIY upgrades to soldered components on

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everything from phones to gpus and so I

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guess all I'm asking then is if you must

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have your integrated memory because of you know unified memory access for the

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cpgp whatever just please don't make any further moves towards locking down

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Hardware swaps I mean maybe that's the solution in the longer term as Robotics

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and automation get cheaper year by year I mean remember when Scotty from strange

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Parts blew the world away with his video showing off the cottage industry players

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in China that made it possible for him to build a new iPhone completely from

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scratch well maybe it won't be that long before your neighborhood computer shop

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has a robot ARM in the back that can do quick reliable component swaps adding

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more memory to your MacBook or more storage to your phone even if everything

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is all soldered to the main board what I know isn't the solution is just the tra

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TR in and recycling programs that are already there they're going to be part

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of it but there's a far greater environmental impact in producing a

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thousand complete computers even with some recycled materials compared to

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producing a thousand chips of memory for upgrades to existing ones I mean Apple

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wouldn't need to recycle a th000 more computers down the line if they could

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have just been upgraded to be more functional in the first place could they

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and you can still sell them iCloud storage just like I can sell you this

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segue to our sponsor if you liked this video maybe check out the one we did

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upgrading the old Mac Pro from back when Apple let us do wild things like install

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memory in computers be own