A few months back, we weighed the pros and cons of shrinking Apple's Mac Mini . Shrinking the computer has the obvious benefits of making it smaller and thus easier to fit in more places, but we feared it would come at the cost of upgradeability and reparability. A smaller Mini would need to solder more parts to the motherboard to save space, and it could give up niceties like the second 2.5-inch drive bay that make it a nice mini-server.

When Apple updated the Mini for the first time in two years at its product event last week, it looked like it stayed pretty much the same. The product dimensions on Apple's product pages are the same, and the outside certainly looks the same as it has since 2010 or so. Unfortunately, according to iFixit's teardown, the new Mini makes several changes that we were worried about, even though the dimensions are unchanged.

In the 2010, 2011, and 2012 models, the bottom of the unit was relatively easy to twist and remove, giving users easy access to two RAM slots. In the 2014 model, the same panel must be pried off with a plastic tool, and an additional metal cover held in place with Torx Security screws must also be removed (iFixit notes that the Security screws are unusually small).

There are no RAM slots underneath that panel, and after popping the motherboard out, iFixit confirmed that the new Mini's memory is soldered to the logic board, much as it is in the MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro. If you think you'll need more memory than what's included in the 4GB or 8GB base models, you're going to need to know that when you order the system.

The next disappointment is that there's no second 2.5-inch drive bay. The Mini still includes one such bay and a small slot for a PCI Express-based solid-state drive, the same configuration used in the 2013 iMacs. It can still support a Fusion Drive setup, but putting in two identical hard drives and then RAIDing them for data redundancy's sake is no longer possible. We suspect that's the reason why the top-end $999 Mini is just called a "Mac Mini" and no longer a "Mac Mini Server."

While the 802.11ac Wi-Fi module is removable, none of the CPUs will be. This is par for the course for the last few Mac Mini refreshes, all of which have used mobile CPUs—these processors are often only available in ball-grid array (BGA) packages, meaning that they all need to be soldered to the motherboard. The base model Mini comes with a 1.4GHz Haswell CPU with an Intel HD 5000 integrated GPU, the same configuration included in the MacBook Air. The more expensive models with faster CPUs and Intel's Iris 5100 GPU are more like the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. The Mini line no longer comes with a quad-core CPU option.

All in all, the new Minis seem like a "be careful what you wish for" update. Yes, we got Haswell CPUs, 802.11ac, two faster Thunderbolt 2 ports, and a $100 price cut in the base model. Yes, the Mini still includes all of the I/O ports you'd expect from a well-outfitted mini desktop. But as iFixit's teardown confirms, the system is no longer as versatile as it has been for the last few years. It's sad to see upgradeability thrown out the window even though the computer still has room for it on the inside.

We'll be getting one of the new Minis in for review in the coming weeks.