Edit: Jesus Christ, people. If you buy a $150 Thinkpad made by slave labor instead of a $1,200 MacBook made by slave labor, you're still supporting a capitalist economy based on slave labor. We all do. We have no choice. The number of smug liberals in the comments saying "well I buy a cheap used laptop" or "well I buy coffee beans and make my own coffee" are completely missing the fucking point.
Don't tell yourself your consumption is moral. All of us make unethical choices every day because there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Accept your shame and guilt and let it drive you to do better.
One of the places I worked had a nice little Thinkpad that was light AF and even had a touchscreen. You could still replace the SSD and RAM without tools. It also was durable as hell.
There is no reason for parts in an Apple computer to be soldered other than planned obsolescence and making it impossible to repair.
The SSD no, but soldering RAM and sharing it between GPU and CPU can actually speed up performance.
Modularity comes at a cost. There's a reason the modular smartphone never worked.
I bet it also cost significantly more than a MacBook Air too, but my comment wasn't even in defense of Apple. It was a general statement until this point.