You're forgetting to look outside the geek, and into the bigger world. Less than 1% of PC owners actually upgrade their machines beyond RAM. They don't do chip upgrades, they don't do HDD upgrades, and they don't even use the expantion slots. Its not pointless, in fact, you've got it backwards. Its pointless to design for such things if no one (respectively) uses them. Its not pointless, its called meeting many design requirements, and meeting them better. Design for use, design for manufature, design for service, etc. That's why those machines only need the RAM upgrade slots. Granted that on the newer ones you can swap out intel chips, but no one (again outside the alpha geeks) will. So the opposite of pointless in SO many ways.
But where is it due. How many designers actually take credit for these things? If you dig around and see how many people claim to have had something to do with these designs, it becomes clear that a good chunk of this stuff is outsourced. And I'm not talking the nitty gritty stuff, I'm talking the conceptualizations as well. Don't get me wrong, the man's a genuis, but he isn't responsible for half this stuff.
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You're forgetting to look outside the geek, and into the bigger world. Less than 1% of PC owners actually upgrade their machines beyond RAM. They don't do chip upgrades, they don't do HDD upgrades, and they don't even use the expantion slots. Its not pointless, in fact, you've got it backwards. Its pointless to design for such things if no one (respectively) uses them. Its not pointless, its called meeting many design requirements, and meeting them better. Design for use, design for manufature, design for service, etc. That's why those machines only need the RAM upgrade slots. Granted that on the newer ones you can swap out intel chips, but no one (again outside the alpha geeks) will. So the opposite of pointless in SO many ways.
But where is it due. How many designers actually take credit for these things? If you dig around and see how many people claim to have had something to do with these designs, it becomes clear that a good chunk of this stuff is outsourced. And I'm not talking the nitty gritty stuff, I'm talking the conceptualizations as well. Don't get me wrong, the man's a genuis, but he isn't responsible for half this stuff.