I think a better question would be why the base Mac Pro costs so much more than a top-of-the-line iMac. Could it be those twin GPUs that are pointless for people other than video professionals? Could be.... Hence, it'd be nice if Apple would offer a base-line Mac Pro in the $2k range like they used to with a consumer video card. Personally, I don't need another monitor. I have plenty of 24" and 28" left from previous computers that still work fine. Given my 2012 Mac Mini is STILL 90% of the CPU power of a brand new Mac Pro 4-core in those results, it's not the CPU that lacks in other Macs but the GPUs. Make a Mac Mini with a mid-range to high-end video card for $1200-1500 and you would no longer have a massive gap in the Mac lineup. Or a consumer Mac Pro (and don't kid yourself with the name anymore, all the "Macbook Pros" are really consumer machines now) around $2k with a good video card like the old Mac Pros used to offer would suffice for many as well even with the lack of internal expansion.
Now one can argue all day long about external expansion options for all those Thunderbolt ports and whether they are worth a darn at those slow speeds compared to internal PCI, but the real problem is the lack of expansion PRODUCTS for Thunderbolt. When I bought a used 2001 PowerMac Digital Audio PPC dual 550MHz G4 in 2006 for $200 I found I could EASILY find a large bevvy of expansion products to bring it up to at least 2005 levels. I got a USB 2.0 card for $29. I got a SATA card for $40. I got a flashed ATI 9800 Pro video card for $90. I bought twin 1.5TB Barracuda SATA drives and got 110MB/sec transfer rates. Finally, I got a 1.8GHz 7448 G4 CPU upgrade for $400. So for the price of a base Mac Mini Intel Core Solo, I had a machine that could boot OS9, play all OS9 and OSX games made up until that point and had full support from Apple in the OS and software for the next two years and didn't find it getting too slow to be useful for Internet (still worked fine as a server) until around 2011 and replaced it in 2012. That's 11 years that wouldn't have lasted 5 years without expansion options.
Frankly, most CPUs are already overkill for most consumers. It is and always has been the GPU that becomes outdated first, which is one of the reasons computers had a graphics card port in the first place, so you could replace it with a faster one without having to throw out the entire computer. This new Mac Pro has connection ports that COULD support different GPU cards, but they're non-standard so it isn't some simple flash a PC card prospect like it used to be at one point. And who wants to spend $3k on a base 4-core Mac Pro when you can build a 6-core Hackintosh with a high-end gaming card for $2k or a 4-core one for $1200? THOSE are the real questions.
Apple doesn't compete. Apple doesn't WANT to compete. Apple loves people who love overpaying them and backing every move their make no matter how awful (iOS7) they might be. They no longer have Steve Jobs to innovate and it shows...daily. One can easily predict the next several years for Apple. Incremental upgrades galore and not much else. An iWatch will FAIL so they'd be better off not doing it. Unless they can get all the providers together, a "big" AppleTV offering will never happen and why would they want to support Apple when Apple has proven they will screw them over in the past by setting prices and taking a huge chunk for themselves? No, they've been burned by Apple before and don't want another iTunes debacle. Apple stupidly doesn't offer app upgrades to the existing AppleTV and so model #3 that has been unhackable thus far remains a total waste of money unless you enjoy all Apple programming. This only opens the door to more competitor sales (i.e. I won't buy the new AppleTV and will keep my Gen1/Gen2 devices and look for something else in the future unless something changes since I use XBMC more than Apple's interface at this point).
No, I'm afraid Apple is continuing to surf on the iPhone/iPad tsunami that Steve Jobs created for the company before he departed, but even the biggest waves eventually dissipate. Apple had a huge jump on Windows95 (like 10 years) with a better interface and professionals jumping on board all over the place during that time. Then Win95 came and almost killed the company. They relied too much on one thing. They are doing the same thing now. A new case doesn't make a better Mac Pro. A better Mac Pro makes a better Mac Pro. There's NOTHING better about this Mac Pro than the last one other than the incremental advances Intel themselves brought to the table (i.e. Thunderbolt and USB3 and a faster CPU set). Making your computer look like a trash can isn't magic. Making your computer do something new and innovative is magic.
