The M4 Mac mini has an overhauled design that adds more ports in a slimmed down package, and to make everything fit, Apple needed a new place for the...
Do you not already have to reach behind your current Mini to turn it on in the instance the power goes out?
Now instead of reaching around, you just would have to reach to basically the same area and press a button underneath. Unless you have a bunch of junk on top of the computer, it’s going to take the same amount of effort.
Mine is rotated sideways so the button is on the corner nearest me. I care more about good access to the cables than I care about the ooh aesthetics of looking at the smooth front. Bottom of the fucking device is not what I call good access.
You could just use the new one upside down, and mash that unobstructed power button to your heart’s content. You’ll have the same great access to the ports too!
Apple thinks that loud fans are a bad user experience, and I can’t fault them on that. So they design around convection as much as possible: hot air rises and leaves the case, cool air enters from below and the case geometry and plastics guide it to the areas that need it most, just by their static shape. That carefully crafted path for the air to follow is designed around the computer being right side up and it doesn’t work the same if the thing is inverted.
It looks like the foot/base bit isn’t tall enough to get a finger to the button without lifting the thing up. That seems daft to me. You’re having to move the whole unit about to push a button
Do you not already have to reach behind your current Mini to turn it on in the instance the power goes out?
Now instead of reaching around, you just would have to reach to basically the same area and press a button underneath. Unless you have a bunch of junk on top of the computer, it’s going to take the same amount of effort.
Mine is rotated sideways so the button is on the corner nearest me. I care more about good access to the cables than I care about the ooh aesthetics of looking at the smooth front. Bottom of the fucking device is not what I call good access.
You could just use the new one upside down, and mash that unobstructed power button to your heart’s content. You’ll have the same great access to the ports too!
Unfortunately that screws up the air flow for heat dissipation, which is an integral part of the case design. Otherwise I’d totally just do that.
Oh interesting! I hadn’t considered that. How does that happen?
Apple thinks that loud fans are a bad user experience, and I can’t fault them on that. So they design around convection as much as possible: hot air rises and leaves the case, cool air enters from below and the case geometry and plastics guide it to the areas that need it most, just by their static shape. That carefully crafted path for the air to follow is designed around the computer being right side up and it doesn’t work the same if the thing is inverted.
It looks like the foot/base bit isn’t tall enough to get a finger to the button without lifting the thing up. That seems daft to me. You’re having to move the whole unit about to push a button
It’s in a weird spot, but it’s also 1.5lbs. so I don’t feel like it’ll be too much effort to slip a finger under there.