Just so you know where I’m coming from, I am not a world-class industrial designer. I’m just a lowly scribe, and I don’t pretend to have degrees in art or architecture, or even engineering. So when I point out what I consider to be something screwy about an Apple design decision, take it as nothing more than a layman’s opinion.

But since I’m both a commentator and a customer, I think what I have to say ought to have a little weight, especially since I have more than a few people reading these words, and sometimes you even agree with me; sometimes.

So how can a company that has been lauded for its wonderful, flashy, memorable designs mess up? That, my friends, is not something I am able to answer. But I’ll list a few nonetheless and let you decide if something is wrong.

Take the most obvious example, the model that has sold thousands and thousands of putty knives, and that’s the Mac mini. Yes, I know it’s tiny and cute, and the parts are packed tightly inside, but why devise such an insidious method for opening the case? Wouldn’t four screws attached to the bottom — so they don’t get lost — be sufficient and result in far less damage? To make matters worse, the Intel-based model also requires removal of a hard drive assembly to get to the RAM slots.

I just wonder how many Mac mini cases have been scratched and bent as a result of this decidedly eccentric case removal requirement. Yes, I suppose you don’t want your customers to go inside willy-nilly, but is this the best deterrent? Besides, shouldn’t a memory upgrade be as simple as possible?

One of the most infamous examples of internal upgrading gone wrong was the original iMac, which required almost completely disassembly to add RAM. It wasn’t quite as insidious as a certain series of minitowers, but I thought that was long ago and far away.

When the iMac’s descendant, variously described as having a base that, to some, resembled a fancy lamp upside down, appeared, you would have thought RAM removal was an easy process. As I envision for a modified Mac mini case, the screws on the bottom plate stayed put even after removal, so you couldn’t lose them. But you could only get at one of the RAM slots; the other was hidden behind a delicate assembly, one that no doubt even made the technicians cringe.

When Apple’s design team came up with an iMac that, for all intents and purposes, looked like nothing more than a slightly thick LCD display, tech writers like me lauded them for allowing easy repair. If a component failed, you took off the rear of the case, removed the module, and exchanged it with a good part.

But rather than let a good idea survive, the product’s successor, first introduced last fall, confined easy upgrades to the RAM — period! What a step backward, and the Intel-based version is little different.

This isn’t to say that Apple always gets it wrong. The MacBook allows for fairly easy removal and installation of hard drives, which is a boon for the IT people at a school when repairs are required. But don’t try that trick on a MacBook Pro, where, like other Apple notebooks, you need tiny or extremely flexible fingers to properly navigate through the thin cables to avoid damaging something. Well, at least RAM installation remains an easy process.

I’ll leave the Power Mac and Xserve out of the question, for they are relatively easy to handle, and I trust their forthcoming successors will continue in that tradition.

In the end, maybe Apple doesn’t concern itself with adding extra features for fast and simple upgrading, beyond memory, except for the aforementioned Mac mini. Just keep it sleek, and that is especially true for the iPod, which continues to sell in the millions. But we won’t know how many millions in recent months until Apple releases its financial statement on July 19th.

Talk about user hostile! Is there no way to conceive of a method to allow you to replace your iPod’s battery without going through an elaborate and often harmful process of prying the case apart? Yes, there is a cottage industry of repair shops who would happily do the job for you, and maybe they’d prefer to keep their businesses thriving.

But when Apple begins to roll out the new generations of iPods, I wonder if they’ll give more than a few moment’s thought to the possibility that a simple method to pop the case and replace the battery really makes sense. I’ll expect UFOs to land on the White House lawn long before that happens, however.

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It’s easy to regard your options to run Windows on a Mac as pretty much of a done deal. On a PowerPC model, the market is dominated by the sleek Microsoft Virtual PC. For Intel-based Macs, almost all the talk these days is focused on Parallels Desktop and Apple’s Boot Camp.

But these aren’t the only options. If you don’t want to bother with buying, installing and coping with Windows, there are ways to run the software without having to buy and install any operating system. One is the forthcoming CrossOver Mac from CodeWeavers and the other alternative, a subscription-based service, comes from True North Technology.

That doesn’t mean the days of the traditional emulator or virtual machine, to use the new parlance, is over. Far from it. If you have both a PowerPC and Intel-based Mac, and still want to install Windows, you have to consider buying one application for the former and a different one for the latter.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

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In recent weeks, I’ve read articles that the shine might be fading from Apple’s hardware, simply because some of the new Intel-based models have growing pains. It’s all consistent with my recent rants about rush releases, where Apple is pushing too hard to get products on the shelves as fast as possible, and maybe not paying as much attention to proper Q&A as they should.

Now I don’t have to spend much time on the teething issues. We have MacBook Pro batteries that swell and stop accepting full charges, unusual whining noise, and heat, heat and more heat. The MacBook’s plastics are too porous and become stained. You’ve heard about it, and you also know that Apple is doing things to address at least some of the problems, so don’t feel abandoned by Steve Jobs and company.

While I suppose you could also worry about new Apple customers who, bitten by these hardware defects, might decide that things weren’t really so bad on their side of the tracks after all. That is until you read the news about some of the pain at Dell.

Now nobody in his or her right mind will predict Dell’s early demise. The company remains hugely successful, even though sales are flattening. Dell is also promising to spend $100 million to fix its broken customer service facilities, no doubt realizing that the people who own Dell gear want to speak with support people who understand their native language and the fundamentals of their problems.

Then there is the report that Dell experienced what is known in corporate-speak as a “thermal incident,” where one of its notebooks burst into flames in Osaka, Japan back in June. It happened during a corporate meeting, and the photograph, as published by a site known as The Inquirer, has apparently taken on a life of its own.

Now before Apple went to Intel for its processors, you might have joked about the thermal deficiencies of WinTel products, but now that Macs use the same chips, what is there to say? Well, perhaps Dell, jealous of Apple’s reputation for hot gear (as in excitement, not operating temperature), wanted to product a smokin’ notebook, and took the task too literally.

In this notorious incident, the cause of the fire was apparently traced to a faulty cell in the notebook’s lithium ion battery. Dell’s corporate spin experts no doubt wanted to make everyone believe the incident was just those one of those things, which happens on a rare occasion, and you shouldn’t fear that your Inspiron might be the next candidate for a conflagration.

At the same time, you wonder what Dell might have done had the incident not occurred at a public meeting, where the whole affair could be photographed.

Of course, Dell’s current posture is to just change the subject, as someone whose hands are caught in the cookie jar might do. Their latest maneuver to boost public confidence is to reduce the number of confusing rebates at their site. So instead of giving them a short-term loan whenever you buy one of their products, you can just pay the actual transaction price for a change up front. Now that would be a healthy change, right? Makes you feel warm and fuzzy about the whole thing.

But I really want to be fair to Dell. Like other PC makers, including, dare I say it, Apple, they use industry standard parts for their products. A small number of Asian plants build all these computers, and sometimes things go wrong.

At the same time, a notebook computer that bursts into flames is something rather more serious than one that runs a little too hot. That is a serious safety defect, and I hope for everyone’s sake that it was only a one-of-a-kind incident. In the meantime, I trust those of you who own a Dell portable might consider keeping a fire extinguisher handy, and I’m at least half-serious about that.

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