Re: "to the credit of Jony Ive, it was remarkably customisable"
From my memory (I had a very brief and small role in the product), Ive designed the casework and "pull-out" handle concept, so yes. Ease of upgrade was one of the big design goals on the Apple gear of this period (even iMac had a simple memory-and-wifi access cover, although I concede that changing the HD was a pain): the PowerMac G3 also had a super-simple case-access mechanism, and this is from the same period. (Back when Apple's design was functional rather than just aesthetics)
I believe it was Jobs who specified that the system had to be fanless. A team of uncredited system design engineers came up with the "chimney" heatsink.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
