It's not an intentional anti-resale feature, but it does make repair a lot harder, because it locks (or at least, can lock) specific hardware components to the motherboard. This means if something on the laptop breaks, you can't repair it without the T2 chip knowing about it and potentially refusing to work. Apple has at least told their authorized repair partners that failing to register the repair with Apple may brick the device should Apple choose to further lock down unauthorized repairs in future firmware updates.
The T2 also has a particularly wonky approach to disk encryption. It uses a key management approach where neither you nor Apple control the actual key material. This means that a dead T2 takes your data with it and there is no recovery. In pre-T2 MacBooks, Apple had a lifeboat connector which could be used for data recovery from the soldered-on SSD. They got rid of this with the T2, because there's no point - only that specific T2 in that specific motherboard is ever able to decrypt the data.
Data recovery - in an era where you have to go out of your way to keep your data out of the cloud, backups are easier than ever and can be done wirelessly - this is going to be your major objection?
Please. As for matching parts to the motherboard, they have a point when it comes to I/O devices. It’s probably way more cloak and dagger than most people will ever have to worry about but it’s not unheard of. Again, if you don’t want to think about such things and want a device that trades ease of repair for improved base security why isn’t that something that shouldn’t be a choice?
I’m generally pretty pro right to repair, but as with anything there are pro’s and con’s to all choices and I’m not fond of several of the right to repair arguments for government regulation being made. Apple is far from the only maker of computers out there. It is the only maker of macOS, but that still doesn’t justify people trying to dictate their business model - especially when many aspects of their business models are major reasons why I prefer their platforms.
The cloud is not going to replace local storage until low-latency, high-bandwidth internet connections become widespread and you can do iSCSI or similar with your cloud service. This is not going to happen anytime soon.
Until then, clouds operate on a best-effort basis, some of which rely on hacks or break common use-cases (I can't put a Git repo in iCloud for example, and it doesn't perform well with lots of small files, and accessing the iCloud folder from the terminal apparently has problems). Why is iCloud still not a supported target for Time Machine, Apple's official backup solution for macOS?
But isn't the repair being harder a net-benefit for the consumer? It's not like the repair is arbitrarily harder. It's harder because the repairs in question deal with the TouchID sensor and the SSD, like you said. I wouldn't want someone being able to access my data just by replacing a component on the computer that then bypassed all the security systems present on the computer. It's the same situation as when replaced displays on iPhones were causing issues because repair shops weren't moving over the TouchID sensor. The cost of that security is that I need to have my data backed up but that's a best practice anyways for anyone that values their data.
"You should have had a backup" is not an acceptable excuse for not having a data recovery mechanism. Furthermore, full disk encryption is not bypassable in the way you suggest. Your login password is (supposed to be) the key material for the encryption, which is stored off-device, preferably in your head. In other disk encryption systems that are not locked to a particular encryption chip, if you take the disk out of the machine and plug it into another machine, it won't be readable unless you have that password.
Furthermore, most people do not make this calculation in their head of "Okay, anything I put behind the T2 is Apple's property now so I'd better have unencrypted backups". They just buy the computer that works and says that it keeps thieves and snoops out of their data. Everything we're talking about with backups comes as a post-purchase surprise, usually AFTER the data is already lost.
>Your login password is (supposed to be) the key material for the encryption, which is stored off-device, preferably in your head.
This is referencing the Touch Bar repair which means that the user has encrypted their drive with Touch ID. The only reason any repair would be harder is because the Touch ID sensor is paired to the secure enclave. The same goes for the SSD. Without the key, as you stated, you shouldn't be able to access the data so I don't see how that's any different than "having a data recovery mechanism". A data recovery mechanism shouldn't exist if you don't have the proper keys.
The T2 also has a particularly wonky approach to disk encryption. It uses a key management approach where neither you nor Apple control the actual key material. This means that a dead T2 takes your data with it and there is no recovery. In pre-T2 MacBooks, Apple had a lifeboat connector which could be used for data recovery from the soldered-on SSD. They got rid of this with the T2, because there's no point - only that specific T2 in that specific motherboard is ever able to decrypt the data.