That's the thing, people complaining as if $5K is a lot, when that was the norm in the early 1990s. People have it great these days in comparison. My buddy bought a Mac IIfx, paid over $9k in the early 1990s. I said "why?", he said "because I can!". He was a game forum administrator, and enjoyed the task. I bought a IIci, less power but cheaper. A few years ago I bought a IIfx for my computer collection, a hobby of mine, and it cost me $50. When you pay for a new state of the art machine, you're paying for the intellectual capabilities like a lease, and not necessarily for the materials that went into it. Technology will get better and cheaper as time goes by and most machines quickly lose value; older tech gains value only if it has rarity and historical value. For instance, first year Lisa computers with dual 5-1/4 drives go for tens of thousands while second year Lisa's and later are better but go for hundreds. This new iMac Pro will probably not be a collectible, although it will be rare due to cost.
“That’s the thing, people complaining as if $5K is a lot, when that was the norm in the early 1990s.”
My first (generic) 20 MHz 486 cost me $5K, and IIRC I splurged and got a massive 4 MB of RAM.
These iMacs will have a substantially longer useful life than five years, simply because processor fab technology is hitting physical limits and we’re not seeing the massive speedups in a short time we used to. That’s why the trend now is towards multiple cores.
These are priced in line with similar workstations from other companies. A high end pro graphics adapter alone can easily run in the $2000-$4000 range.
If Apple is smart (and as a company it sometimes is, heh) the new “modular” Mac Pros will be able to be joined together locally in clusters using Thunderbolt, forming a small supercomputer. Apple already has the software framework to distribute a workload in a setup like that. That approach would get a lot of content creators, scientists and engineers really excited!
These new iMac Pros look nice, but I’ll wait and see what the new Mac Pro brings to the table...