These two statements are in reference to my first line: "I want a quality quad core mini-tower"
Apple doesn't make exactly what you want.
Dell doesn't make what I want, because while they do have a more granular product line, they can't sell OS X to run on any of it.
We both simply have to suck it up and deal with it.
A big, expensive maxi-tower is not the right solution for desired mini-tower. Apple sells only one system with 4 or more cores, so the Mac Pro the "only solution" for a quad core.
And yet the irony is that if it only cost $949, you wouldn't be whining, because a "huge box" is acceptable to you as evidenced by your comparing that Lenovo tower to a mac mini.
The "Apple tax" here is about 142% ($949 for Dell i7 vs. Mac Pro 2.8 quad for $2299). Some people are saying that's too much. Some have gone back to the Windows side.
Not by a long shot. Since there's the option of buying a used 2.66GHz for around $1700, the "tax" is overstated. Or you can find some other alternatives (with a 90 day warranty)
here, for as low as $535. For some tasks, these may be just as satisfactory; YMMV. Generally, the trade-off is that you get expandability at the desired price point, but at the cost of CPU power. Life is full of such trade-offs.
We're pointing out how the gaping hole in Apple's lineup is getting bigger and bigger. Not saying that the Mac Pro is a bad product, not saying that the Mini is a bad product. Just saying how they aren't good products for some people.
Sorry, but because of customer demographic shifts to more and more laptops, the hole isn't becoming bigger: its actually getting smaller, because the way that a business measures isn't necessarily based on technology, but on sales (and sales opportunities lost).
And as I've said before, I wouldn't mind having an xMac either, but I can understand why its introduction is unlikely: its not the marketplace direction.
Now I could do the same as you are and whine about how Apple is aligning their corporate strategic direction based on the actions of 10 million consumer wallets instead of just little egotistical "me", but that's an easily recognizable exercise in futility. Even the two of us together aren't a large enough market subsegment for even a company as small as Apple to pay any attention to us.
FWIW, I find the same frustration in finding good quality hatchback automobiles: as a consumer, I'm an obscure minority niche that's not popular or in demand, so on even the best of days in the marketplace, I only have a few "table scraps" to choose what to buy. Again, deal with it.
And the obvious question is "Why doesn't Apple have a Core i7 system?". The response "because Apple sells no systems with desktop chips" is true, but misses the point of the question.
The real point is that it misses that desktops are in decline, both in PCs and at Apple. The trend is towards mobility (and by extension, a trade-off is non-upgradability of hardware) and Apple is an industry trend-setter, so they've minimized their downside risk exposure in the desktop market by minimizing their product options.
Disliking this fact won't change reality. And reality doesn't care.
From a business perspective, Apple still really isn't all that big and they've been severely burned in the recent-enough-to-remember past by excessive product proliferation. Thus, they clearly and very much want to avoid the GM business model of trying to be the "be all to everyone" and tolerate product line gaps so as to avoid overlap.
Not another lame automobile analogy....
Yet it is still indisputable. FWIW, my first car wasn't bought new but used. Same thing for my first home computer. And if you want to go 200mph, you're simply not going to do it in a VW GTI unless you push it off a cliff.
I'm amazed at the Apple fans who are proud of Apple's high prices and margins, and brag about how much of their money Apple has in the bank.
Fortunately, I'm doing neither, for I'm the consummate cheapskate.
Its just that I believe that I better understand the box that Apple is in and instead of banging my head against the wall hoping that it will somehow change via magic pixie dust, I strive to understand what and why they've done and if there's any reasonable expectation of it changing...and then pick my fights.
I'd like to be wrong and for a great $999 xMac to appear next week, but this simply isn't one of them as far as I can see.
The "gambit" you are using is to assume that system size is an important criterion to everyone, and that therefore the Dell Core i7 is "bad" because it is bigger than a Mini. That's a simple fallacy.
Incorrect. System size is clearly a purposeful product attribute of the mini (its even in its name) so when trying to find an objectively honest "equivalent", w
e are ethically obligated to try to accommodate the general spirit and intent of that feature, even if its not important to us individually.
Besides, except for Apple ads, I've never seen a Mini that wasn't surrounded by a pile of extra disks, hubs, cables, USB thingies and the like. I'd rather have a modest-sized system with room for that stuff inside.
Irrelevant, since the USB cable birds nest soup isn't unique to the mini: virtually everyone's desktop system that I've seen over the past half decade - no matter the brand - is progressively surrounded by a plethora of USB cables and the like.
We need to keep in mind that there's predominantly only two things that ever get installed inside the generic PC tower's case:
- a second hard drive ... but mostly because we won't throw away the old small one because it 'still runs' (I'm guilty of this myself)
- a PCI card for more expansion ports (USB, eSATA, etc)
And sure, there will also be a gamer contingent that upgrades their video card every 9 months, but that opens the can of worms of why are they using a $949 PC as a replacement for a $199 or $299 console?
-hh
