I haven’t thought about it in a while but the premise of the article rings true. Desktops are overall disposable. Gpu generations are only really significant with new cpu generations. CPUs are the same with real performance needed a new chipset and motherboard. At that point you are replacing the whole system.
Is there a platform that challenges that trend?
I find the quoted statement untrue. You still have all peripherals, including the screen, the PSU, and the case.
You can replace components as and when it becomes necessary.
You can add up hard drives, instead of replacing a smaller one with a larger one.
Desktop mobos are usually more upgradeable with RAM than laptops.
There’s probably more arguments that speak against the gist of this article.
All of the peripherals will carry on to any new system. With usb-c basically all you need to run in your case is a gpu and nvme.
Throw in thunderbolt and networking as well as hdd based das won’t be bottlenecked.
Yeah desktops can have more ram than laptops and that is the one case where a desktop can really shine. Even then there is usually a pretty big ram limit you need to pass.