El Reg's review. Not very detailed tbh.

Apparently the new Mini's SD card slot is of the SDXC variety.
Shame it's stuck round the back of the machine. What a stupid place to put it.

So is the power button, which I always thought was odd.
Then again, I doubt many users squirrel it away in a cubby hole like they do with towers...

I guess when you look at the thing, it could be hard to put it at the front...

The power button I can just about live with on such a low power device that's basically designed to be left on 24/7 (or the OS is anyway).
I doubt it would have been that hard to put the Sd card slot on the front. They managed to squeeze in an entire power supply which I imagine would be somewhat larger than an SD card reader.

I suspect having two slots on the front would have spoiled the look of it in Jobs/Ives opinion. Apple often put style over convenience.

Having said that, are people really going to be plugging & unplugging SD cards from these things all the time? I was thinking shove a decent sized one in there to make for an extra drive but just pretty much leave it there. If you're always plugging in cards from digital cameras you can't guarantee what sort of cards they are, so you're going to have to either put in a multicard reader or people are going to have to plug the camera in directly or use an external card reader, both of which would be USB. Logically, if you're going to put a slot on the front and spoil the look of it a USB slot makes much better sense than any sort of card slot.

One of my pet hates with Apple is putting power buttons (and other useful stuff) around the back of a Mac.
Unless there's a technical reason why it's round the back, I can't see why they couldn't have put the SD card at least at the front, where it would be much easier to use. Of course, when you look at the insides of this new Mac mini it's amazing how they've managed to squeeze it all in, so there could be a genuine reason for it being round the back - though I doubt it somehow.

Just my rough-arsed attempt below, but it doesn't look bad - and a damn sight more useful - with the SD card and power button on the front.



Maybe I should work for Apple's design unit?

I personally think that the power button and SD card slot should be on the side of the machine, rather than the back which isn't practical, and the front which looks fugly.

But why not have a reader on a USB cable that you hide most of the time?

Or even...



(considering where the power supply is located down the side edge, my 1st attempt above might not be technically possible - this should though)

The power button looks good, but get rid of that SD card slot.

I think it's quite odd to include it at all, to be honest, and it's certainly something I could live without.

Why not hide the power button around by the side as well, so that the only opening is the disk slot.

Because then you'd have to search/grope for the power button...

...which is dumb design.

Steve Jobs hates buttons on display, hence the power button at the back on the imac & mac mini

But as Saspro said my iMac buttons are behind the screen so I have to fumble around for them. Well one.

In which case the designer is made of fail.