Disagree. has very little to do with it. Though it finally clicked why I keep seeing people repeat this, it's Apple users. (Not a dig btw, I can totally see why it'd feel that way from their POV).

For starters, in the past, Crucial RAM wasn't really compatible with the Apple devices that did have socketable/upgradeable RAM. Technically some of their laptops/imacs did, but Apple really didn't want you servicing/upgrading those on your own, Crucial DIMMs weren't QVL approved by Apple (even though it'd generally work), and those were all SO-DIMMs not standard desktop DIMMs. The Mac Pros and what not that had upgradeable ram were all (L)RDIMM, not UDIMM. Crucial didn't make (L)RDIMM, that was Micron's market. Point being, this change in dynamic from Apple had virtually no impact on Crucial, as it was a market they never really served, or at least certainly not in the past decade.

The consumer market isn't shifting to non-upgradeable devices. There are more and more of them, but they're largely either not a market Crucial served to begin with (Apple), or supplementing the consumer devices that do have upgradeable RAM (Steam Deck, very compact HTPC's/Thin Clients, things that aren't really desktop replacements).

But the Market has shifted, Mac is increasing in marketshare and that shift is even higher on expensive laptops, where people get expensive upgrades.

Two or three years ago, I bought an XPS 15 with minimum memory specs and immediately maxed the RAM to 64gb and threw in a 2tb nvme drive. Last year I purchased a M3 Macbook Pro and made no upgrades. I don’t expect to go back to PC, because the Mac performance is so great and the power managment actually works.

When I threw my XPS 15 in my bag, it often comes out of my bag with no battery. The Mac not only gets awesome battery life, but it doesn’t randomly discharge when closed and sleeps properly.

Indeed. The market is changing. The overall personal electronic (computational) device market (Desktop, Laptop, Mobile/Tablet) is growing year over year, and because of that, mac shares going up doesn't mean Desktop PC ownership/sales are being cannabilized. Desktop Market (in terms of yearly sales) is relatively stable, and in terms of ownership continues to grow, while laptop/mobile/tablet (regardless of Mac/Android/Windows/Arm/etc) is growing healthily.

Crucial didn't leave because no one was buying RAM, or even that less people were buying RAM. Or at least that was the situation prior to shit going sideways with pricing/availability in the past 2 months, but that's independent of Apple/Crucial/Micron. They left because there's been little margin in unbuffered DIMMs (aka consumer RAM) for years, and there's virtually no demand or opportunity for innovation in the space for Micron to leverage the brand to make their B2B/Enterprise sales look better, and what Does make them stand out (largely cosmetics these days) is not a core competency of crucial or Micron. There's even less demand for anything interesting/innovative/worth having a whole separate company/BU for in the markets that are growing (Apple, Mobile, Laptops).

Also, now is a prime opportunity to exit the market, but it's also clear this has been in the works for a while though. Look at their limited and frankly half-assed product offerings for DDR5, then compare to what they offered on DDR4. Substantially less SKU's, with very little offerings for the enthusiast market. This wind down started circa 2020.

As far as Crucial is concerned, Apple has never been relevant or a danger to their bottom line. And if Micron wanted in on that money, they're better served doing it as Micron, as opposed to Crucial, which was tantamount to operational overhead in that context.