Storage and RAM not being user upgradable is an environmental nightmare for sustainability.
Not having internal slots for storage and relying on USB or NAS is not an appropriate alternative for professionals regardless of what their leadership says is what professionals want.
We’ll never know, but RAM being part of the SoC is probably contributing substantially to their performance capabilities compared to competition. The only real way to know that probably requires being an engineer at Apple. I’d wager $3.50 that they’d get a substantial performance deficit from switching to DIMMs, and that terrifies them since that would further push everyone to x86 workstations.
I spent about a year arguing with C-levels that our fleet running 8GB was slowing down productivity, with evidence to prove it. It was like pulling teeth to procure some SODIMMs.
I’d still say this article is coming at things from the wrong perspective. That $700 Walmart M1 MBA is more than adequate for most kids doing school work, and/or grandparents farting around on FB. If you have a family and had to grab a few identical laptops, and you aren’t able/willing to be tech support, it really makes a lot of sense financially.