Their inability to make a top of the line desktop is threatening my ability to justify buying their laptops or anything else from them. I run a company. I'm not going to mix and match operating systems and if I can't have high end desktops for heavy media work I'm going to switch everything eventually. I'm not abnormal.
People keep trying to come up with some 4D chess explanations for why this makes sense for the always wise and prescient Apple. It's much simpler to use Ockham's razor to conclude that they are making a shortsighted mistake.
You saying this doesn't make it true. To a neutral observer, Apple looks like a technology company that makes consumer products, including sometimes computers.
Edit: From Wikipedia:
During his keynote speech at the Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, Jobs announced that Apple Computer, Inc. would thereafter be known as "Apple Inc.", because the company had shifted its emphasis from computers to consumer electronics.[93][94] This event also saw the announcement of the iPhone and the Apple TV.
Still, I think there are two arguments:
They are sitting on so much cash. There is obviously a cultural or organizational problem that produces to much friction to keep this product line up to date. I'm fairly certain many other corporations, if provided access to basically infinite cash, could figure out how to put new ram in an existing product line every year.
There's huge value in having creative professionals and developers use your product. Keeping people in your ecosystem is important. This might be hard to quantify on the bottom line, but it seems like an obvious strategic mistake to give up this advantage.
What if the ecosystem they want is iPads and iPhones?
For the sake of argument, why? It's probably one of their worst selling products. Nobody defends the remaining iPod enthusiasts when they demand a new giant capacity iPod.
Maybe we just need to accept that Apple doesn't want to be in the desktop computer business for much longer?