You're right, it's been debated a lot.
I think the MacPro line isn't understood by a lot of people because they simply don't have the need for one. These simply aren't consumer machines so much as prosumer and high end.
So for the average consumer, yes, paying $2500 for a tower to surf the web, write emails and do the occasional Photoshop just for themselves or Aunt Martha, it seems like a rip off.
But for a creative professional that needs a pro-quality Mac to do gigs that EACH time pay back the cost of the MacPro, it's a steal.
The real sweet spot for a studio is the $5k 12 core MacPro. Even at 5K it's actually a giveaway- the processors alone are nearly 4grand by themselves. If you're running a production and you need Final Cut Studio or Logic Pro,or whatever, then there's simply NO OTHER WAY you're getting it done. And as big of a Hackintosh fan as I am, the reality is a legit production can't go that route- big companies have to keep things totally on the up-and-up. (Though I've done a number of Hack builds for small productions and it worked out amazingly, but I digress).
So to say there's no other way, is not hyperbole- it's true. There's no pro-level FCS solution from Dell, or anyone else, there is only Apple. Given this fact, it's actually a wonder they don't charge MORE for the higher end MacPros, because they have a total monopoly on them.
Therein lies the problem for the consumer though- because the MacPro line is a monopoly, there's no way in hell Apple is going to break their own lock on it to offer the much sought after mid-range Mac.
For me, it's something of a love/hate. I totally understand Apple's position. I currently use the latest single quad MacPro at work just about every day. (As I've had at work just about every single model of Mac tower dating back to the beige PowerMac 8500 era in the mid 90's.) So I love these machines.
On the other hand, I hate that Apple is such a monopoly in some ways, because if there was a legit Apple competitor also making Macs, it'd drive the pace of Mac progress much faster. Apple and their fanbois totally re-wrote the real history of the clones back in the 1990's- I was there and know the re-write is total bullshit. The clone makers took off and were producing specs of Macs WAY WAY WAY beyond anything Apple had to offer. Take a look at DayStar for example- their machines kicked Apple's machines down the block and stole their lunch money to boot. They made quad-CPU Macs at a time when Apple was still pretending that was impossible.
Just when Apple pulled the plug, the cloners like Daystar and Umax were making faster/better/cheaper G3 designs, they were working on removing the wall of bullshit between 'PC' hardware and 'Mac' hardware (think what a boon that would be if one could simply get ANY decent graphic card they wanted for their Mac, instead of this ridiculous 'Mac compatible fairly tale bullshit that we STILL have in that arena!) while Apple was still being stingy as ever with newer gen hardware- and they were about to unleash CHRP Macs that would have blown the barn doors off everything.
Apple pulled the plug and labeled the whole thing a failure- because the reality was they didn't like the competition. The reality was, the pace of Mac progress absolutely EXPLODED with the cloners- but Apple would rather dilly-dally, release a new update to models, oh, once every... now and then ho-hum, and they know the fanbois will eat it up anyway. So there you have it, they can sit on their thumbs with the MacPro for as long as they want and milk the profits out of the carcass until it's old and moldy, and it'll still be the only game in town.
If someone like Daystar still made Macs, you can bet Apple would have to get up off their ass in order to compete. The old 'update every once in a blue moon' wouldn't cut it, and their product profit cycles would shrink like everyone else's. So it's easy to see why they'll never allow that again- why would they want to create their own competition and shrinking bottom line?
