[benjamincburns]

> it's main purpose is to showcase the company's engineering chops

I agree with this, but I'd add that it's to show off their silky smooth blend of engineering and design. We all can go to NewEgg or a million other online retailers and build something which approximates the specs of this machine. Shit, almost two years ago I built a 32 core machine with 32GiB of RAM (could've added more RAM, didn't need it as problem was parallelizable and CPU-bound).

As for the sales successes, I really want one of these, and I'm sure I'm not alone. I'm betting most individuals who buy these will be the types who also spend money on art. What I mean is, I could scrape enough loose change together to get one, but I have no use for it. My desire for one is purely emotional. It's beautiful. Just a hunch, but I think Apple's margin on this product fits more closely with the fine art consumer market than the mass consumer market.

[JVIDEL]

That's the problem, the people who want this "as art" aren't nearly as many as those who bought the previous mac pro for work, so again you have the same problem the G4 cube had.