I would go on a limb saying I'm a lot smarter than you think.
Thanks for not reading not my post..
1)$2500 Mac Pros START with Quad core...or can't you read? And I would certainly bet that a Xeon Quad core $2500 Mac isn't that much (hence 10-20%) faster than a high end iMac.
2)Yup...video and audio industry experts are certainly NICHE. Or are you trying to convince me that there are as many diehard a/v experts out there as there are as the regular consumers of personal computers?
3)Here we go again...Windows...not even gonna start a 100 page essay on this. Suffice to say that my point was that a $2500 Mac Pro box can easily be challenged by a cheaper Wintel box.
Yes, it is niche. But so what? If Apple can make any profit at all in this area then it is still worth pursuing.
With regards to point 3... Go on. Seriously, go out and find me an example of a comparable workstation to in particular the base 8 core and 12 core Mac Pro's. For reasons I've already explained, i7's are not comparable to Xeons. Remember that today is day 583 after the MP was last updated, and that because Apple does not lower there prices these machines were at their best value more than a year and a half ago. Still, my guess is that if you were to configure a comparable windows box that actually used the same components as the MP it would be much more expensive than you think. And that is ignoring many things such as service, software (OS X), enclosure, etc.
So now I am forced to buy Dell? Oh, and so you know, those Dell prices you see online are basically full price...if someone pays those prices they didn't do their homework. Besides, businesses (I would argue the folks buying the Pros) would get a pretty good discount at Dell (as I have worked at numerous companies in IT and had great deals from Dell).
I see where you're going with Newegg and Dell list prices, but that's certainly not the price(s) that folks pay for Wintel workstations.
For consistency we can only compare the full prices that each company provides, we'd be going in circles to talk abput discounts, special deals, etc. You'd have to consider refurbished macs, and the excellent educational discounts for example (in particular the edu discounts the applecare very significantly, which is pretty important in a workstation).
And no, you're not forced to go Dell, but give us an example. I've seen countless comparisons to Dell and HP in particular vs Mac Pro's and for the most part Apple is very competitive here price wise. They are generally more expensive when considering optional upgrades, and pro grade GPU's (Quadro / FirePro), but competitors generally lack an enclosure of the same quality, don't run OS X. Also, especially with Applecare, apple's service is highly respected. I won't argue which is slightly better value, since we all value these aspects differently. But I will argue that Apple is very competitive here in it's pricing.
