Is it ? The base Mac Pro is 2899$ on the Canadian Apple Store. I'm on Dell.ca right now and I'm pricing a Precision Workstation (business section). This thing starts at 1976$ base. Fantastic right ? Not even close. First, at 1976$, I'm getting 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, 667 mhz. I'm getting a 80 GB SATA hard drive. I'm getting a 256 MB nVidia NVS card. I'm getting a 6 year old OS (downgrade to XP is base, I have to pay extra for Vista). The processor, though a Xeon, is not a nehalem, and it's a 2.0 GHZ, quad core, single thread per core.
Let's say I do customize my super Dell workstation to be up to spec to what Apple offers, guess what happens ? The Mac Pro becomes the cheaper option and still has better specs, since I can't spec the Dell workstation for DDR3, triple channel RAM or to have a Nehalem processor with 2 threads per core.
Mac Pro buyers need to realise that what they are buying is not a competitor to the Dell Studio XPS 435, it's a Dell Precision Workstation. Professionnal grade hardware fetches a professionnal grade price, it's as simple as that. The Mac Pro isn't for you if you think it's overpriced, just like many Dell buyers look at the Precision line and scream OVERPRICED at the top of their lungs.