Bad Mac Design

When I got my Mac Mini about a year ago, I was looking forward to getting a taste of Mac design. Sure, it was meant to be just a “dabbling in Mac” system but it quickly became main workstation and, despite my gripes, is the computer I am typing this on.

However, as anyone who has opened up a Mac Mini knows, the slick operating system belies a real mess under the hood.

No computer should ever have a putty knife listed as a required item for a ram upgrade, which the Mac Mini does, but the mess that comes with upgrading the Mini does not stop there.

As I found out this weekend, Apple took extra steps to ensure that their product would disintegrate upon opening, by making a bevy of internal layout choices that are at best hard to understand and, at worst, make no sense at all.

If Cars Were Macs

The Mac Mini is a strange beast under the hood. If it were a car, it would be like finding out that your brand-new Ferrari needed to have the engine dropped just to change the oil. Tasks, which should be very simple, are amazing complicated.

As someone who has upgraded a lot of machines, I’ve seen a slew of bad designs. I’ve worked on HP desktops that literally required you to pull apart the frame to get at the RAM slots, an old Compaq that required you to pull the entire hard drive bay out to slide another drive in and my personal favorite, a different HP that forced me to undo all of the ribbon connectors to add a video card.

Yet, none of these messes equals that of the Mac Mini.

However, some of the “challenges” are expected. It is harder for me to forgive HP and Compaq for their design flubs as they were all full tower systems, supposedly built to be easily upgraded. The Mini, on the other hand, focuses on being small and cute. It is meant to be elegant on the outside.

So when I was forced to remove the drives from the mother board with a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers in order to upgrade the RAM, I just laughed about it. Everything was tiny, no space was wasted and the entire system is like a giant sandwich, with the motherboard (and RAM) as the bottom slice of bread.

Likewise, when I had to deal with the stupid laptop-style RAM pins, I didn’t grumble. It was a necessary evil. A small price to pay for a full computer smaller than my first CD burner.

It wasn’t until I put it all back together and found out that I had no wifi and my computer sounded like it was trying to take off for a flight to Memphis that I got upset.

These were not necessary evils, just stupid design choices.

The Wifi Problem

If you face your Mac Mini, the wifi antennae is located at the very top on the back right hand side of the Mac, right up against the plastic top. This is a great location for picking up a wifi signal and ideal for the computer overall.

The problem is that the antennae still have to be connected to the motherboard and that, as we discussed above, is at the very bottom.

Original mage Courtesy of Picofrad.org and Licensed under a Creative Commons License

In the image above, the antennae is circled and the highlighted cord is the one that connects it to the motherboard. You’ll notice that the cord completely bypasses a nearby board, one that is connected to the main board via a ribbon, and instead goes down underneath the drives.

While that is odd, what makes the problem worse is that they decided to have the cord go over the fan. This makes it so that, when you open up your Mini, you are virtually guaranteed to rip out the wifi antennae, especially considering the clip holding it on is so weak.

Original mage Courtesy of Picofrad.org and Licensed under a Creative Commons License

In this image, the person who took apart the mini was aware of the issue with the antennae cord and moved it aside before opening. However, it shows you where it connects to and how it goes over the fan.

The end result is that it is very easy, unless you are aware of the issue, to rip out the antennae without even realizing it. If you don’t use wifi regularly, as I don’t, you might not notice the issue for weeks or months.

Fortunately, the fix is easy, simply a matter of reclipping the antennae, but it does mean that you have to take the entire computer apart again.

Not a critical flaw, but definitely annoying and, at least theoretically, is easily fixed.

Fans Full Speed Ahead

The wifi is bad because it makes it possible for the person upgrading the computer to make an easy mistake. However, the fan controller raises the stupidity bar just a hair by actually requiring you to disconnect something to get at the Mac.

Original mage Courtesy of Picofrad.org and Licensed under a Creative Commons License

The wire highlighted in the image above connects the fan to the motherboard. In order to open up the Mac, as seen above, you have to first disconnect this wire. If you don’t see it and fail to read the instructions, which luckily I did, you can disconnect it without realizing it.

If you forget to put it back in before you power up, you’ll be treated to the loudest sounding Mac in history. The fan will instantly spin up to about 5500 RPM and stay there, no matter what the temperature inside is.

While this is better than not having the fan spin up at all, I have lost one Linux system due to a processor fan that wouldn’t switch on thanks to a bad kernel, it doesn’t make any sense to me to require this wire be unplugged when others, including a ribbon connector, don’t come out at all during normal opening.

For a company that is legendary for its elegant design, these are a pair of head-scratching decisions. Though I am certain that Apple had their reason for both of these, they are hard for me to understand from where I am sitting.

Conclusions

Apple is known as a company that has impeccable attention to detail, as one that polishes every bit and tightens every screw. Unfortunately, under the hood, there are a few details that didn’t get a lot of attention.

Some might argue that it was never Apple’s intention to for users to open the Mini and do fundamental tasks such as upgrade the RAM. However, even if you only intend certified technicians to crack the case, the more steps you give them, the more opportunities there are for mistakes.

Think about it for a second. How many times has a Mac technician opened up a Mini to replace the RAM but forgot to either replace the wifi antennae or the fan control wire. If they didn’t test adequately, a broken system was shipped back to the customer and would have to be returned again for repair.

It doesn’t matter if they’re making things harder on me or their own employees, it will affect the consumer eventually.

Seriously guys, these are the kinds of details you’re famous for addressing and the mistakes you usually don’t make. Overall the Mini is a great product, why make it so ugly under the hood?

Ferrarri wouldn’t do that.