Apologies, I believe I am in somewhat of a bad mood at the moment, but the MBP and Mac Pro are primarily work computers, not gaming computers.
Well, ok, Macs aren't gaming computers, mostly because of:
1) There are few games for macs.
2) Therefor gamers don't buy macs.
3) If gamers don't buy macs why release games for them?
4) The hardware most often isn't very good for games.
5) The hardware most often can't be upgraded.
6) OS X graphics drivers and OpenGL are slow and outdated.
7) Therefor even on the same hardware games are faster in Windows so people will dualboot anyway.
8) Gamers still run the games in Windows.
Anyway, I'm an old amiga and later on OS nerd and for me I just want a decent OS, back in the Amiga days MS-DOS 6.22 + Win 3.11 sucked so therefrom comes my hate for Windows, which is quite illogical considering how stable and good XP SP2 and probably Vista is nowadays. Anyway I would prefer "to be different" and run something else.
I'm perfectly happy with FreeBSD + KDE but I would like to be able to run for instance Photoshop and games but I don't want to dual boot, so there comes OS X which offers some commercial apps and games. If I had a mac I would probably play in OS X even thought I had worse performance just to not have to install and dual boot Windows.
So, for me the huge advantage with a mac and os x is being able to game without dual boot and so on, and nothing else. Many of the smart utilities for os x cost money and in bsd/linux/solaris they tend to be free so as long as OS goes I'm quite happy with an open one.
I already know that my needs might not be everyone else, and even less what Apple want to sell. But they are mine and therefor I will have the issues I have, no matter what if others have them or not. I'm a consumer, not donator/apple employe, so I will argue for what fits my consumer needs.
Easily seen by the use of a 2.2/2.4 GHz processor, when there is no doubt that is complete overkill for almost every game, especially running a 8600M GT. Maybe it wouldn't be GPU limited with an 8800 or something, but it is.
And after all that (bitching, I admit) I agree with what you said.
I googled for prices and it seems a 2.2 GHz core2duo is (t7500, is that the one? whatever, doesn't matter so much, it's the principle) is around 330 dollar, 2.4GHz is around 650, so that's 320 dollar higher price for the 1/11 th faster cpu. However an update from 256 to 512MB desktop version of 8600 GT here in sweden cost around 150 sek, which is around $20. So say 128MB more vram might cost 10 dollar, but it doesn't matter, my argument is valid for 50 dollar aswell.
For Apple to add that $10 or whatever to the lowend modell wouldn't have made a huge effect on price, but it would keep me happy, but now they are using 128MB just to trick people into getting the middle end modell on which they probably earn a little more, but that one comes with a $320 or so more expensive CPU of which I have no ****ing use at all. And that's what are making me insane. I won't fall for that trick and buy that modell, especially as I know that in a half years town that CPU won't be top of the range, it won't be much slower than another one, but it will be much cheaper, and then it's so stupid to pay a lot for it.
128MB vram however are cheap.
To me 15.4" 2.2GHz, 2GB, 120GB, 256MB 8600M GT and 17" 2.4 GHz, 2GB, 200GB, 512MB, 1920x1200 modells only would have been enough. Then add the 13.3" with integrated graphics and 1GB ram and put the same shell on everyone and just sell them as Macbooks.
There you go, three modells of which noone really suck (well, macbook with real gpu would be better, but one could argue that the lack of it is good for portability, althought I would have prefered even a lowend gpu to integrated graphics.)
Edit: I'm angry because it's so obvious it's made to make a larger difference of low- and middle end modell to sell more of the later one, not because the cost of 256MB vram where so high that they had to do it.
