New Mac Pros won't be out till the end of next year, and no one knows what these are going to be. If Apple made a cheaper Mac (sans the 'Pro') with current high-end consumer components I would seriously consider it, but I can't hang-on another year playing wait and see and there isn't really anything tying me down to OS X anymore except Adobe CS. I guess what they think I need is the iMac, but it is too much of a compromise for me. I own a 2009 iMac, and I never really considered it a 'desktop'. It is a screen with a laptop stuffed inside it and it shows; I can't even watch YouTube 720p without the fans coming on full. I am tired of compromising on speed and power for just OS X and nice aesthetics, so I simply will not consider an iMac over a custom built PC for the sole advantage of having a 5mm edge. Building something myself means I get a ludicrously powerful i5 desktop with GTX 680, 16GB ram, 256gb SSD, 1TB HDD, Thunderbolt, USB 3, and a nice IPS monitor for around $1500. I am super happy they made the iPhone/iPad as I own both and the industry needed it, but I do think it has drawn their focus away from the desktop and it is much lower as a priority. Not saying they are going to abandon the desktop line tomorrow however I struggle to believe it will still be around in 5-10 years; I don't want to carry on investing in a low priority OS and Linux is much more mature than it used to be. I am probably in the 10-20% of computer users that Apple doesn't cater to, so I don't think they will lose sleep over it.
I certainly agree with a lot of this. The lack of a pro machine is certainly a disgrace at the moment. I sometimes wonder if the decisions Apple made when computers were its entire business now need to be revisited now they've diversified a bit. I think they can afford to compete on price now, and not price gouge over BTO options. They've started being more reasonable with RAM prices, but they have a long way to go.
For what it's worth, your YouTube issues are down to Flash. I have an older iMac (2007) and 720p runs fine for me in HTML5.
Agreed, I really wish they had revisited it. I wonder if it was the failure of the Cube that made the mid-tier Mac disappear? I suppose it could be the Mac Mini which replaced it ultimately, I seem to remember the Cube was pretty underpowered.
Anyway thanks for the YouTube tip, I have tried the HTML5 version a few times and it is certainly less taxing on resources (just H264 without the Flash wrapper I guess). Can't remember why I went back to Flash, think I just had a few weird glitches in playback, I'll try it again.
- Edited for clarity.