Doug Pasnak, Cruftbox (via Harry C Marks, Curious Rat):

To ask that every piece of modern electronics is designed to allow the tiny fraction of hackers to upgrade is the height of hubris, unreasonable, and a huge imposition on everyone else that has no desire to ever crack the case. All that ‘upgradability’ ends up making the product cost more and be more susceptible to failure. Catering to the fringe is not the way to make good products. Making the best product you can for a low price is the way to make good products, even if it means eliminating upgradability and home repair.

This goes further than Doug’s point about the Retina Display-equipped MacBook Pro, which has been criticized for its lack of upgradability. It also speaks to the criticism of iOS (and, to an increasing extent, OS X) by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cory Doctrow and others, who tell us that big, bad Apple is dumbing down the computing experience for us by abstracting us from things like file systems.

Clearly many consumers are happy with the tradeoff, which makes for easier use from a wider swath of people who don’t want to be concerned with the myriad fussy intricacies of computer use. It’s not Apple’s fault that the vast majority of consumers who want iPads don’t give a damn about hacking it. Apple’s simply responding to a market need.