Although, the Mac Mini has also been neglected for some time, it just recently got an update, silent though and only posted on the apple website and store. The reason it got an update and the mac pro didn't is because Apple sells a lot more of the consumer based macs which are as follows:
The timing of the Mac mini update was due in part because the 320m didn't come up till this spring. Same factor contributing to why the MBP and Macbook didn't drop until after the 320m hit the market even though the CPU updates were somewhat available in quantity.
The whole Apple cares more about products largely in reverse order of unit numbers is largely speculative hype.
The White iPhone 4 isn't shipping right now either. Is that because Apple cares more about the Black iPhones than the White ones ? Or there is some problem with the components that go into the White phone? Or they just don't get book enough capacity ?
Sad but true.. Apple, Inc is not the same Apple we all knew and loved during the PowerPC era, it is a new child with the aim of satisfying far more its consumer clients and leaving behind or pushing by the waist-side its business clients and pro-users.
This is one of those "facts" that folks keep marketing here in these forums but repeating it over and over again with the hopes that if folks read it enough times it will stick. While Apple is doing more things that doesn't mean things have completely dropped off the list. Additionally, folks seem to want to turn this into sibling rivalry complex ( Steve got on stage with the iPhone, but not with the Mac Pro .... booo hoooo )
Obviously, Mac are a more mature market. Generally PCs have been around for 3 decades and Mac for a large fraction of that. The number of folks for which a personal computer is a new and magical device is growing smaller worldwide and is already at very small fractions in the most developed countries.
Apple is in a much more stable state because they don't "have to" grab share away from Windows PC systems as the primary mechanism to achieve growth. As long as Apple's growth rate approximately matches the overall PC market growth they are healthy.
So for the Mac Pro market to be healthy the real question is not if Apple is giving "dog and pony" circus shows around each product introduction. That's superfluous bull manure in the context of selling into a mature market. The question is whether the user base is growing. That is the key critical element of growth.
I'm not extremely sure which way the Mac Pro market is going. A huge fraction of the noise and complaints in this forum are about products Apple doesn't make, but dumped here because this is the closest match. Complete folly to make any judgments on much of what is presented here. There is certainly some migration of users onto the next lower class offering. That's is normal. Some users workload won't increase as computer power gets pushed into lower level offerings.
The growth will only come from folks who have ever bigger problems that need to be solved. New folks with those problems and current users who have problem growth. If Apple doesn't see those then that will put the Mac Pro on thin ice.
Note these are not the "I wanted a mini-tower but I'll buy a Mac Pro anyway" , "I only want to buy a computer every 6-9 years so I'm going to buy max future proof", or "I have always bought this form factor so will buy it again because upright rectangular, headless boxes are best". If that's a 30-40+% of the Mac Pro market then it is doomed. All of those represent value prop mismatches between what the Mac Pro primarily offers and what the users want.
