Perhaps for you, but I very much care about my laptop's size and especially it's weight, as I carry it around on a daily basis.
Repairing or upgrading it aren't really of interest to me, as I wouldn't be able to aquire the parts where I typically live anyway. And performance and cooling have already been more than good enough for me in most laptops for the last decade.
https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-13-pro-deep-dive-lp...
I've been eyeing LPCAMM2 interposers for non-RAM uses - as an off the shelf connector for stacked PCB designs. The conclusion was that it wasn't produced or used at sufficient scale for it to work.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20260420/...
Can't you select and copy the text in the photo (on most smartphones and PCs at least)?
Optimal: piecemeal. As in: X sockets on a board, each socket takes a chip that adds CPU core(s), GPU cores, and some amount of main RAM. More chips, more powerful computer.
Keyword: socket. Read: replaceable. Bad chip out, good chip in. Slow chip out, faster chip in. Soldered onto board = reliable, but a defect could junk the whole machine.
Then there is the HBM which is an expensive process to mount on the chip.
Haven't Apple (A-series, M-series) and others been copackaging memory for a while? (SiP or MCM?)
The issue, of course, is just how much time, effort and skill is required to do it.
It might become a viable commercial process outside third world countries if RAM prices spike even more - or if someone finds a way to teach an off the shelf $1000 robot arm advanced autonomous microsoldering.
Then there's the problem of forcing the device itself to recognize the new RAM. It's a device-specific trick. RAM sticks have a little tag chip that tells a PC "how much RAM this stick has", but RAM chips themselves don't - so the device has to infer its RAM capacity from elsewhere. Like strap resistors on the board. Which you have to find and adjust for the new RAM capacity. That, or fix the RAM values in firmware, which is also device-specific.
I'm surprised that in 2026 this is still true.
You could easily fit a little microcontroller on the die of each RAM chip which reports its make/model/manufacturing date, capacity and capabilities, can be triggered to run self-tests, etc. If they aren't doing that yet, I'm surprised that they aren't.
As for the videos and the Macs, you can see the same people (likely) soldering RAM as well.
Good BGA experience and a steady hand seems required
And yeah, it can be, but that's how you end up with the far slower regular DDR. Fast, repairable, cheap: pick (at most) two.
Besides, since RAM isn't getting cheaper for a while, this isn't a big issue now.
"Smartphone makers glue them because it's cheaper and they can make more money ..." No. It's what the consumers want. Thinner phones, water resistant phones, and thinner laptops.