Pro machines for A/V production are routinely $7-10k and have been for as long as I can recall, right back to the 90s. You’re probably just not in the market. These are for commercial buyers who make lots more money from these machines than they spend.

Also, six months ago everyone was bellyaching about how Apple has no serious pro devices and was abandoning the desktop. Now it’s too expensive, and my eyes can’t roll back far enough.

Arguably, the whole idea of a modular machine is that the base price can be lower, and then you can spend the money on the things that are valuable to you.

I've owned the last two Mac Pros. I won't be able to afford this one. But fair enough: in this case it may be that they can't raise the ceiling without raising the floor.

I am all set to buy one second-hand in five years time. But only If the design looks less like a tea-trolley in real life than it does on the video.

Can't both of those things be true?

Those machines tend to have way better specs.

Apple just isn’t listening.

I guess you’re not very familiar with the Mac Pro line. The ones Apple let die in 2012. You know the ones with starting prices at $2000-$3000 adjusted for inflation

Apple leadership also deems developers as “pros” as well at least publicly. I don’t know what they were thinking

Makes me wonder. If you're a software engineer at Apple, are you given a $6k Mac Pro and $5k display to program with?