Probably has something to do with the lack of thermal headroom. Apple painted themselves into the "thinness" corner a long time ago, they can never release a new product that's thicker than the last one, so they're constantly having to come up with new compromises, the logical conclusion of this race to nowhere being the MBA which is so crippled in every conceivable way, the real magic trick isn't how they managed to make it fit inside an envelope but how they managed to remove so many things and still make people want to buy it.
IBM probably had a functioning mobile G5 at some point, and it would probably have worked inside something with the thermal headroom of a HP or Dell mobile workstation, but it would melt a PowerBook enclosure. So Apple found themselves in a dead end and had to sit by and watch Intel PC notebooks run circles around the PB G4 at ever increasing speeds. And it's happening again with cutting edge mobile GPUs and mobile quad-core. The form factor puts a cap on the power.
Unfortunately you've hit the nail on the head. They've sacrificed functionality for form factor and now they seem to think that people want it thinner and thinner and won't reverse course.
I will admit, I do like how thin my MacBook is. But I know that there are much more powerful systems out there that are not that much bigger. Functionality is far more important than form and somebody at Apple needs to realize this. I mean, look at the Dell Studio XPS 13. It's 0.88" at the front and 1.35" at the back. It's only an iPod classic thicker than the MacBook, yet it offers dual GPUs, faster processor options, and standard features like card readers, HDMI, full size ExpressCard, and others.
Functionality is far more important than style or being super thin. I have the MacBook and an HP with dedicated graphics, bigger screen, full size ExpressCard, HDMI, VGA, S-Video, card readers, and a lot of other features the Mac doesn't have, like Firewire. Even though the HP weighs 2 pounds more and is thicker, guess which one I take with me everywhere and use more? The HP. Why? Because functionality is more important than looking cool.
On to replying to other posts:
So you can shout about specs all you want. Do your 'pro' PCs run Mac OS X? No they don't, they run Vista. Game over.
Honestly, this system:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152099 running Vista is far more capable than anything Apple currently offers. The hardware combined with Vista just blows away the MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Why? Well, look at the hardware. It has the same processor as the $1,999 MacBook, yet costs $700 less. It has a 1GB GeForce 9800M GS, a blu-ray reader/DVD writer combo drive, a 7200RPM 320GB HDD, full size ExpressCard, 4GB of RAM, VGA, HDMI, eSATA, card reader, etc. It also supports Dolby Digital Live, something you can't get in OS X at all. Not only will this system play my blu-ray discs on my HDTV or 23.5" display (which is 16x9 unlike Apple's 16x10 displays), but if i'm playing a game it will take the 5.1 signal from those games and encode it in Dolby Digital in real time, so I get 5.1 sound from games or any audio source. True 5.1 sound, not VHS like Pro-logic like you get with the majority of iTunes movies and TV shows. Even better is that system has a number pad, something Apple doesn't even offer on external keyboards and is a "custom" option you have to order on their desktop keyboards now.
Thats good that you prefer OS X. It's your choice to like what you want. But don't try to say it's better than Windows. Because it's most certainly not. Functionality is the most important thing to consider when buying or using computers, and Windows combined with modern hardware is far more capable than OS X on modern hardware.
Yes, it's marketing speak with an incredibly powerful placebo effect, to the point where you can take the exact same product you sell to consumers, slap the "Pro" label on it and have 95% of the users say "wow, this feels so much better/sturdier/more reliable/more well built than the standard version".
ProTools became an industry standard in digital audio recording not because it was better than anything else, but because it was called _Pro_ Tools. How can it not be the best? It says "pro" on it so it must be.
Few have exploited it more shamelessly than Apple, though.
Again, you hit the nail right on the head. Can't be said any better than that.
No, the mid-range/low-end tower is more something like this : "Hey look, notebook sales are outpacing desktop sales by a large margin. Good thing we had the foresight to get out of that market when our own mid-range tower offerings stopped being profitable years ago".
The last affordable tower computers buy Apple had dismal sales. Ever since, the industry has noted the decline of the desktop computer. And you want Apple to suddenly go back to it because ... ?
You make it sound as if notebooks are outselling desktops 4:1 or something extreme.
http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/12/notebook-pc-sales-outpace-desktops-good-news-for-apple-aapl 38.6 million notebook sales compared to 38.5 million desktop sales. It's not exactly like desktop sales are falling off a cliff. Most of that notebook sales growth comes from netbooks, a market Apple has yet to enter.
Apple's notebook sales might be higher than their desktop sales by a greater margin. But thats not because people prefer notebooks so much as it is that Apple doesn't offer any good desktops to begin with. The iMac is a laptop on a stand with a bigger screen. The Mac mini is too crippled for its own good and can't even begin to compete, spec wise, with PC desktops in the same price range. And the Mac Pro is just an overpriced consumer desktop with a server processor.
Let's also not forget that, again, the PC gaming market is bigger than Apple's entire market. To the PC gaming market, laptops are secondary systems that will never be able to replace high end desktops.
So while the notebook market might be "outpacing" the desktop market, it's due in large part to systems that Apple doesn't even make. And Apple's notebooks only outsell their desktops because they don't offer any desktops worth buying.
I also fail to see how Apple's desktops aren't profitable, considering how weak the hardware is and the insane prices they charge for that weak hardware.
One last thing to consider is the fact that Apple's GPU choices for the current Mac Pro lineup is... well.. pathetic. People who need real rendering power are going to turn away from Apple and towards other desktops.
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