The New Mac Mini’s RAM is Soldered On?
Yep that is the latest discovery about Apple’s new Mac Mini and it’s lack of upgradeable parts. The news of the non-serviceable Apple product comes from Brian Stucki the owner of www.macminicolo.net a Mac Mini colocation data center in the Vegas area. Brian confirmed that the new Mac Mini has ram that is not user accessible and is soldered to the motherboard. He also mentions that the hard drive can be replaced and/or upgraded but this action does void the Apple warranty.
I personally have never owned a Mac Mini and only use one at a prior job but I just don’t understand the point of locking up a device like a PC or Mac and stopping a user from making their own upgrades after the product is purchased. It’s a computer for God sakes, something a huge majority of us love to take apart and upgrade/downgrade as we wish. How many times have you purchased a computer with less then great internal components because you knew that you could upgrade those components at a later time when money was available to you or with a better aftermarket part? Right?
Apple Says
Apple states in a recent knowledgebase entry “You can configure your computer’s memory at the time of purchase”. I should also note that Mr. Stucki also states that the Apple Mac mini has new tamperproof screws on the bottom of the device.
Mac Mini Shopping
I stepped through the buying process of a Mac Mini on Apple’s store tonight and during the memory selection as you can see below in my screenshot, there’s no indication that the memory cannot be messed with later. It’s not even outlined in the advanced details under the “Learn More” section. At the very least it should be pointed out here so we don’t have to learn this detail at a later time.
What do you think?
As a big Apple fan myself, I’d like to hear what you think about this and the future of Apple products or other products for that matter that may be trying to lock hardware down from third-party user upgrades in the future. Should this be expected as the new norm? Should we be complaining so much about it? Or should we just conform and deal with it? Or is this just not that big of a deal? Let me know what you think!