I would say so, yes. I mean I hate MacBooks personally and the way they no longer support most pc standards, but I have no problems coming up with justifications for their choices beyond ”planned obsolence”.

For instance if the memory is all soldered on there is a lot less to test for, i.e. the device only has a small set of memory sizes and maintaining quality and consistency with those is easier. You also no longer have to provide support for your customers shoving shoddy memory into the device and contacting support when it doesn’t work properly.

Sorry, no. Haven’t used one in years.

Intersport, Biltema, Stadium etc is surely the lowest quality you can possibly find.

Swede here. Seems a bit like it's got more to do with the use-case than anything else. Our sleds ("pulka") are pretty flimsy I'd say, I think this overall has more to do with it being a highly situational item that just doesn't really wear out that much if you use it properly.

You use it for maybe a few weeks every year, and the wear isn't that much since you're just using it on snow.