We’re not even at 3 years since they had their “fireside” chat with Tech Crunch, et al. on April 4th of 2017. We’re at roughly 31 months. Should the Mac Pro have taken this long? No. Should people exaggerate how long it has been in gestation? No.
Actually, it has taken 6 years. I am sure they were planning revisions in 2014, 15, 16 on their internal roadmap, but the thermal corner got them and they had to rethink. This caused a delay not to mention their wrong indication that pro’s were moving their workflows primarily to iMac and MacBook Pros. On top of that, I believe leadership thought with 22 million iPads per-quarter, they could do just fine neglecting the Mac overall. But something strange happened along the way, sales of the iPad dropped, Windows OEMs actually started to up their game, Android phones started to up their game too.
Even leaks out of the company admit, internally, they took their eyes off the Mac. We saw this with the 2016 MacBook Pro. But they are righting many of these wrongs, its just that it has significantly affected their delivery time. Part of that is likely due to human engineering resources being stretched thin.
If you need this Mac Pro for your organization, you are not gonna care about the cost of the components and like most, when a new one comes out in Fall 2020, 2021, you are gonna keep some of the old stock and sell off most and replenish.
Frankly, Apple really doesn’t care, its printing money everyday with the iPhone and the rest of its products and services.