I remember in 2007, buying my first MacBook. It came with an enormous 2gb of RAM. I asked about upgrading it. The guy leaned in conspiratorially and told me that Apple’s RAM upgrades were a rip-off, and that I’d be better of buying it elsewhere. So I did, for half of what Apple were asking.
This is a grift that Apple have had for far too long, and there’s a part of me that’s convinced that their move to soldered RAM was to stop people upgrading after the fact more than it was about SOC efficiencies.
When the software ecosystem gets too old, slap Linux on it for a fresh lease of life. Did that with my old macbook pro back in the day. Got years more out of it.
Yeah I’ve had a lot of old Mac mini Linux servers around. Ran home assistant on it for years.