The last Mac we are buying for now.

The base spec Mini (1 year warranty) with an HP L1750 17″ monitor (3 year warranty) ran $800 delivered, including a Firewire 400 to 800 cable to allow restoration of all data and applications from the Firewire backup drive always connected to the machine. The latest Mini only has an FW 800 port, in addition to 5 USB sockets.

The Mac Fry

We have named this machine the Mac Fry as the previous one fried, I own McDonald’s stock (they make great fries) and we fully expect this one to fry in due course.

The Mini removes one significant heat source from the box – the LCD display – but then appears to compound heat management issues by cramming what’s left into an impossibly small cuboid. Still, you get the choice of a reasonably priced matte LCD of your choice, something unavailable from Apple whose LCDs are either overpriced (both 24″ and 30″ models) or come in glossy only (24″).

Because our FW back-up is fully bootable, you simply connect it to the Mini with the FW cable and it thinks it’s seeing another Mac, meaning you can use Migration Assistant to move data, applications and settings over fairly seamlessly. MA will promptly tell you that there is just one minute remaining for your migration to finish, which it will continue to do for the next hour. This error has been there as long as I can remember. I mean, how difficult is it to program the fifth grade arithmetic that has it that you divide bytes/minute by bytes of data to get time remaining and reflect the result in the progress bar? Bottom line is that this computer is barely out of its box and I’m already wondering what other basic errors have been made in its engineering. Well, there are plenty, if you read on. 

The base spec of the Mini is positively cheap. Only 1mB of RAM and a small 120gB HDD. I have a 160 gB notebook 2.5″ SATA HDD lying around (yes, from a dumpster MacBook we recycled a while back) and will swap for that as, at 90+ gB, the Mini is a little too full for comfort. First I have to order another 1 gB of RAM (all of $10 though Apple will charge you many times that) and the Mini will hold up to 4 gB (2 x 2). A total of 2 gB is fine for just about anything, including Lightroom. The other specs are fine – the machine has Firewire and a Core2Duo 2 gHz CPU and the allegedly better nVidia 9400M GPU.

The Mini sports that awful mini-DVI video port with a non captive plug, and comes with a Mini-DVI to DVI adapter, which is just what the HP display requires. Just don’t move the Mini about too much because this adapter is just waiting to fall off. There’s Mr. Jobs’s ‘form over function’ obsession again – in a rear panel connector, for heaven’s sake. Did someone beat this guy for untidiness when he was a kid or something?

So let’s get to the big issue – heat.

Heat killed the 20″ late-2006 iMac and took my late-2006 24″ iMac to death’s door, whence I just saved it.

Bottom line is that the GPUs in these, once cooked, start to deteriorate slowly thereafter, with growth of screen artifacts and more frequent beachballs, until the whole thing gives up the ghost.

Well, at least the Mini is separate from the screen but everything is crammed into the tightest imaginable space and, as the saying goes, “Trust, once lost, is seldom regained”. And Apple hardware, simply stated, has lost my trust.

So after Migration Assistant had done its thing, and after I refused to upgrade Leopard to 10.5.8 (better the devil you know – 10.5.6), I immediately checked iStat, Temperature Monitor and Fan Control to see what the heat story was.

Well, as Pete Townshend once put it, “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss”.

It runs too hot.

Here are the readings after the Migration Assistant process – one which is mostly CPU- and HDD-intensive. Meaning no GPU labor was involved.

Now while this Mini has yet to fry, these readings are higher than those at which the 20″ iMac would show artifacts – although it had probably fried by then. As you can see, Apple continues to insist on running the (single) cooling fan in the box at ~1,000rpm, despite these elevated temperatures. Now I’m beginning to think like a conspiracy theorist ….

A second with Fan Control and the minimum fan speed was increased to 2,200 rpm (it remains inaudible) and a few minutes later here were the readings:

By running the fan up before frying I’m hoping to nip the issue in the bud this time. Most devotees of Fan Control, like me, come to it after the patient has already passed the point of no return. Anyway, for an additional 15-20F cooling, I would rather buy a new fan in a year at $50 than a new Mac for $600 and, I can assure you, the latter is not an option.

Here’s a heat trend graph for the three hottest sensors (there are several others) – the immediate drop at the start reflecting the increase in fan speed from 1,000 to 2,200 rpm:

The blip after the early drop reflects the use of iPhoto to download and process holiday snaps, so you can see that GPU use immediately raises CPU (Northbridge) and Airport card (Wireless) temperatures; the Airport card must be close to the CPU in the box as, obviously, no wireless effort was required to process pictures downloaded using a wired card reader. Another piece of down right execrable engineering by Apple. Having a fragile wireless card act as a de facto heat sink will not put the designer in the pantheon of great engineers.

I am reminded of the multiple Airport card failures my ante-pre-penultimate (for you lawyer schmucks reading this who despise clear English – ‘third from last’ for those of you with a spine and morals) MacBook suffered. Now I’m beginning to understand why, thanks to Temperature Monitor.

Temperature Monitor does not report a separate GPU heat sensor so, if that is right, I assume that the GPU and CPU are integrated (much in the same way as the older Intel GMA950/3100 was integrated with the Core2Duo in earlier MacBooks). So GPU heat is a proxy for CPU heat and vice versa. To cut to the chase, you can treat the ‘Northbridge’ temperature as being identical to the GPU temperature.

Any comments that I am running components at sub-optimal temperatures will be treated with the respect accorded all trash. Save your time and forget it. Cooler is always better.

Now I have the exciting prospect of cracking the Mini’s case to look forward to, so that I can install the additional RAM and bigger HDD. Oh! joy. You can read all about that here where, in addition to adding RAM and installing a larger hard drive, I also present the results of real world import and export timings and temperatures using RAW files from my Panasonic G1 and Lightroom 2.

And I have a jumble of cables to hide while I’m at it.

A nerdy note on video RAM:

The nVidia 9400M GPU used in the Mini does not have video RAM of its own. Rather, it ‘borrows’ RAM from the CPU’s RAM, probably explaining the occasional slowness I have noted with just 1 gB of CPU RAM installed. By the time OS X and the 9400m have taken their chunks, not a lot is left for applications.

The default ‘borrow’ is limited to 128mB. I have read that the 9400m can ‘borrow’ up to to 256mB of video RAM which it can do if the Mini is maxed out to 4gB of CPU RAM. Wikipedia says that once you have 2gB or more of system RAM, the GPU RAM increases from the base 128mB to 256mB. Nice! The relevance of this is that more video RAM generally means faster image rendering in applications like Lightroom. Either way, increasing minimum system RAM from the stock 1gB makes sense. The 1gB in our Mini is reported as occupying one of the two RAM slots by System Profiler, so adding another 1gB ($12) or 2gB ($45!) is sensible. You need a putty knife to crack the case and thereafter adding the RAM is trivial. The whole thing can be done in 20 minutes.

Adding a bigger HDD is harder. I address that and provide some performance and temperature measurements here.

There are fine videos on the web illustrating both tasks.

Theories abound.

One thing I learned early on in my years in America is that the country has a marked taste for conspiracy theories.

While the average Briton, Frenchman or German will write off government bungling as so much incompetence by the least able in society who could not get a real job, the American will, likely as not, take you aside and whisper in your ear “It’s a conspiracy, you know”. I have learned that the best course of action in these cases is to nod wisely, claim other commitments and exit stage left.

As it is, I have yet to meet one conspiracy theorist who is remotely successful. Many of these fellows, and they are almost always men for some reason, seem to be suffering from PTSD and probably spend their spare time making crank calls to right wing radio talk shows. They are, after all, the only ones who can get past the censor who screens the calls.

You know the types. “Castro killed JFK”, “We never landed on the Moon”, “Exxon controls the world”, etc., etc. Nuts. In a world where everyone lusts for their moment of fame, loves to talk and craves publicity, not one of these conspiracy loons has managed to explain how the secret of each conspiracy has been kept by so many for so long, undiscovered. It does not solve.

My point is that my email box filled with conspiracy theories based on my recent awful experience of having not one but two 30 month old iMacs die. “Designed to fail”, “Forced replacement policy”, “Jobs needs coin for a new liver/heart/spleen” – you get the idea. And Elvis lives. Right.

The realities are, I’m afraid, far less likely to sell newspapers. Lee Harvey Oswald was a sharpshooter with awesome scores, Neil Armstrong brought back some moon rocks and there’s a reflecting mirror on the moon from which we bounce laser beams testifying to his arrival, and Exxon controls under 2% of the world’s crude. As for Jobs, he owns 7% of Disney so I doubt he will have to wait too long for that new organ or have any difficulty scraping up the cash.

Elvis, however, is almost certainly alive.

So why do Macs, at least the ones I have owned, fail early and often? It’s not like I’m a careless teenager burning them up with moronic computer games. The common thread has been heat. After the cool running G4 iMac and our equally cool running G4 iBook, both 7 years old, and both still in daily service with nary a problem between them, everything since has failed. My first MacBook had graphics issues. The second one got so warm that toasted nuts (like the guys making those crank calls) were the order of the day, then after two Airport cards made no difference to the intermittent wifi, was finally replaced at no charge by Apple (after I had wasted countless hours on getting it fixed). The G5 iMac was sold after nascent heat issues showed up and the story of the 20″ and 24″ late-2006 iMacs is documented all too well here. The second Airport Extreme router I owned doubled as a frying pan for which honor it competed with the AppleTV. All gone.

The reality, I suspect, is as mundane as the simple fact that the modern Mac is poorly designed to manage heat. The emphasis is all about looks and so long as it works in the warranty period, who cares? Like modern cars.

Take a peek inside an Apple store – beautiful design, rows of glossy screens screaming ‘buy me’, chic iPhones waiting to convince you that you are not just another overfed American who hasn’t seen his privates in years – if there is a conspiracy here it’s an obvious one. It’s called short term profit.

The slim and trim Apple Geniuses waiting to favor you with reverse condescension while they make $10 an hour. The soft sell of implied superiority. It’s the very best of American marketing. When did you ever read one of those sycophantic, advertiser supported ‘independent Mac magazines’ survey users of 2-3 year old machines for their experiences? In their advertiser supported hell of ‘free hardware and write nice about us or we will can you’ nothing ever breaks. Be nice or El Jobso will fix you good.

An even worse problem for a growth company with public stock like Apple is what I call the ‘hamster treadmill’ problem. Keep running faster or you fall off. Every quarter’s results have to beat understated expectations and promise yet greater numbers a quarter hence. Once day the whole thing will come crashing down like a pile of cards but, until then, we make hay.

No? Well there were 20 companies in the Dow in 1896 when the index was started. Only one survives today – GE. And it was kicked out not once but twice early in the twentieth century when it soiled the sheets. Nothing is forever.

And if you don’t believe that, I’m from GM and I have just the car for you. Why, it does 230 mpg!

So I’m not all that mad at Apple for making crappy hardware. But I would like to get even! As that bumper sticker I saw on a Fiat in NYC years ago reminds me “You breaka ma car, I smasha ya face”.

The first iMac we bought, and the last reliable one*

* Hint: It’s the one in the middle.

At least let’s be grateful for OS X. This photographer most certainly is. Apple got the Unix code free from Ma Bell and stole the graphics interface and mouse from Xerox who were too dumb to know what they had. How’s that for a conspiracy theory? And it remains the one part of the Mac ecosystem which just works to this day.