This is a pretty bad article because the author didn't really consider how product design works.

The new M4 MacBook Pro products are not a new design, they are a spec bump in the existing design. Making the kind of changes they are asking for requires a more extensive product redesign that only happens on Mac systems every 4-5 years or so.

Apple's full redesign of the Mac mini does show a slight increase in the modularity of the system by socketing the storage on a (proprietary) module.