Everything is soldered or glued together. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/06/retina-macbook-pro-full-of-air-style-proprietary-parts/ http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-with-Retina-Display-Teardown/9462#.T9xJjhfDc0I So basically you're paying a premium price for something that's built like a cheap throwaway laptop. Nice. Even the battery is glued into place. The ram is soldered in so you have to pay Apple's extortionate memory prices. It can't ever be upgraded. The HDD can't be replaced or upgraded. Apple's greed knows no bounds. And the starting price for this thing is like $2200. $2200 for something that's built like a $200 netbook. Not surprising I guess. Macs are meant for your rich Kim Kardashian type douchebags who throw their laptops away every year and buy new ones. They aren't meant for real people who actually need to be able to repair and upgrade their laptops. Every laptop I've ever encountered has needed some kind of repair after a few years, even the ones that were treated like museum pieces. At the very least you're going to have to replace the battery, which isn't even possible with this thing.
As some of the responses on Ars pointed out, Apple is making choices based on the size of the laptop. Smaller proprietary parts mean more room for the battery and fans etc. I guess if you buy a laptop to tinker with it, then this isn't a good choice. But most people buy laptops for other reasons...remember how you thought the Air was a useless failure, and instead it's turned out to have a huge impact on not only Apple's laptop line but also PC laptops? People like the form factor.