[geeks] Apple desktop refresh

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Mar 11, 2009, at 18:33 , Rick Hamell wrote:

>> ...and it is light years behind most good PC cases when it comes to
>> actually doing maintenance, upgrades, and fixing it.
> <snip>
>
>> Doing any sort of repair or upgrade work is difficult because  
>> taking the
>> case apart to access the buried motherboard is fairly labor intensive
>> and more difficult than any good PC case.
>
> Yet it's just as "good" as the PCs from any of the major  
> manufacturers.

As good or better than most, yes, but not as good as all of them, and  
motherboard access is particularly difficult compared to most other PCs.

There are some truly excellent cases that have come out over the  
years, including some of Apple's previous designs.

The Mac Pro is one of the neatest looking cases, with (mostly)  
invisible internal wiring  and an admirable attempt to hide the  
internals from frightened end users.  It's award winning design, but  
not if you are the guy doing repairs, and the original version does  
have some serious flaws for a machine at that price point.

Remember we are talking about a $2500 base price machine here.  I  
expect machines in that class to be fully accessible, easy to maintain  
and upgrade, and easy to clean, and I expect their SMC firmware to  
work too.

It's worth noting that Apple has improved internal access on the new  
Mac Pro, and the airflow is less obstructed.  I have not read enough  
about it yet to see if motherboard access is easier now, but that  
would be a huge bonus, as would easily upgradable CPUs.

> We use a large number of Dells 690s and T7400s at work sitting next to
> the Mac Pros. If any hardware goes bad on the Dells I always insist  
> that
> a tech comes out to fix it as I don't want to waste my time taking  
> them
> apart. At least the Apple I'll take apart.

I would take the Dell (or something like a Lenovo D10 or my own  
machine) apart and replace a CPU without much worry.

The Mac Pro... I'd have to really think about it and would likely plan  
a lot more time for it.  It's a lot harder to get into on the original  
model.  The new one seems much easier, and the airflow looks a lot  
better.

Understand that I really like the Mac Pro, I just think that some of  
its problems are inexcusable at this price point (and yes I feel the  
same way about other machines).  I remember the original G series  
machines and how easy they were to work on and how nicely midrange  
they were, and I'd like to see machines like that again.

My $2800 machine has a broken SMC controller that Apple could fix with  
a firmware update, and they won't do it, even though Mac Pro failures  
due to overheating are
not uncommon.  It an easy fix that would make a lot of Pro owners happy.

That kind of thing sucks no matter how much Apple-aide you've been  
drinking.



-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."