.. i mean, do you really think it matters if someone shaves 5 minutes off their work day because they have some crazy rig that geekbenches 40k? especially when compared to ,say, accomplishing something on the computer in 4 hrs instead of 8 simply because the two of you interacted better?
You are missing the point here. (or you didn't read my earlier post)
We are not talking about 5 mins saving time. We are talking way more than that. People who do rendering, simulations, math complex calculation all need as much power as its possible. There is never ENOUGH power. Those people who need it usually have an idea what is on the market to help them or what is coming soon. Ok, so far so good.
Now, lets take Apple's 12 core that is so old that it makes me sick (they didn't update it when they could with newest Intel CPUs) and then lets look at what is HP offering today (16 core easily)
Now, lets not be bothered by the speed and difference in efficiency (old CPU vs NEW) and lets just focus on the cores here and for the argument sake we will assume that each core is the same speed (so probably the HP's CPU's will have lower clock).
Now, lets take rendering as that is something I can talk about the most as I understand it the most ))
I have a short movie I've been working on and I have a scene with around 1200 frames. Now If I hit render on my machine (12 core MP) it will take roughly 7 days NONSTOP to render the whole scene. That means that my computer is unusable for that time so I can use my laptop or do this partially over night which results in about 14 days (night times only).
Now, if i had 16 core machine it would take around 4.7 days. That is not shaving 5 mins that is shaving 2.3 DAYS!!
Yes, you can then argue that for my needs I should create a small render farm and you COULD be correct but if you don't have those needs every weak then your investment in the second machine would not be returned so easily.
So, you just want Apple to stay current so you can get your job better and faster.