Thoughts
I hate the narrative that big tech or otherwise is trying to prevent you from understanding technology in order to derive you of agency.
This is a Matthias-over-criticism, but big tech is making increasingly complicated technology out of their own hubris and they happen to not care that you can't understand it.
Like Apple doesn't design their own chips in order to prevent you from manufacturing your own compatible replacement silicon. Apple's trying to create the best chips possible and it just so happens that you as an individual can't keep up. (Just so that it's clear, I am responding particularly to the claim that Apple intentionally makes their devices difficult for the *consumer* to understand, but using the absurd hypothetical that you want to try to understand the silicon-level chip. Apple does make their own chips in order to confuse their competition. But we reached the point where computers are too complicated for any one person to understand about 40 years ago.)
Apple doesn't want you replace your own RAM. That is true. But the argument is that they don't want you to understand *something*?
They don't care whether you understand it or not, they just don't want you to do it.