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Very fair points there.

Thanks for acknowledging that! It's actually getting pretty rare on /. to have CIVIL discourse with others... ;-)

About the not wanting it enough, that is, of course, my own speculation (hence the use of "might", and after that my reasoning). The hackintosh numbers increasing, among pros, I explain a bit more below, but it's also speculation.

In the end we'll just have to wait and see why the inclusion of the ARM cpu. There are many things this can bring to the table, from basic branding (like having some shinny, 60fps fully animated "bios" or "fastboot") to interoperability/recovery or even flat out low power. Hell, even using it for not having to replicate the "neural engine" and provide FaceID just like in the iPhone X.

There's actually a precedent for that last bit: You know that the original Macintosh was SUPPOSED to have an MC6809 Microprocessor; but nobody wanted to port Andy Hertzfeld's(?) work on QuickDraw and its Overlapping Windows that he had done for the Lisa (which had an MC68k in it), and so they just put a 68k in the Mac, too!

Of course the Mac community, especially the Pros, will likely not resort to piracy or Hackingtosh by default, but from a look at the amount youtube instructionals by very popular personalities, or the scale, detail and variety of hardware compatibility lists (going all the way up to high-end GPUs and CPUs) really goes to show who has been building Mac workstations recently, and these will resort to piracy if it makes things simpler. As I said before, they are already in the shit if caught.

I would imagine the Looooooooong wait for a Mac Pro refresh isn't helping that. In fact, I would imagine that most "Hacks" are by people that really NEED a more powerful Mac Pro (esp. in the GPU dept. The CPU doesn't do so bad, even now).

Here's to hoping they do the "Modular Mac Pro" they have teased, right!

And, for us mere mortals, a nicely upgraded Mac mini, too!! Please, Please!!!

Very fair points there.

About the not wanting it enough, that is, of course, my own speculation (hence the use of "might", and after that my reasoning). The hackintosh numbers increasing, among pros, I explain a bit more below, but it's also speculation.

In the end we'll just have to wait and see why the inclusion of the ARM cpu. There are many things this can bring to the table, from basic branding (like having some shinny, 60fps fully animated "bios" or "fastboot") to interoperability/recovery or even flat out low power. Hell, even using it for not having to replicate the "neural engine" and provide FaceID just like in the iPhone X.

Of course the Mac community, especially the Pros, will likely not resort to piracy or Hackingtosh by default, but from a look at the amount youtube instructionals by very popular personalities, or the scale, detail and variety of hardware compatibility lists (going all the way up to high-end GPUs and CPUs) really goes to show who has been building Mac workstations recently, and these will resort to piracy if it makes things simpler. As I said before, they are already in the shit if caught.

As a long time Apple user, even in the days when Apple had a tiny market share, it makes me sad that the company is unwilling to create something better. It must be unwilling, anyone can build a better, cheaper Hackintosh. This is a company with enormous amount of money, and yet they do not deliver new models. The ones doing Hackintoshes might need to tinker with the OS to get it working, Apple has total control over the OS. This is just silly. If they cannot do better let others create clones. The are obviously inapt to create something useful.

The present laptop is less compelling than the previous version. No magsafe, touchbar is probably not what I want. And, and... not enough memory. 16G is not enough, this seems to be the base configuration of the new Mac Pro. I have 16G in my machines and it is not enough, either it too little memory or they should write code that requires less memory. Since 10.6.8 I think that Mac OS has gone southwards, less snappy and more memory hungry.

So Apple either bring back clones or visit this page:
https://www.tonymacx86.com/

Apple: see what you can build, pick a couple of models and then perhaps do some sort of industrial design to make it more of a Mac, but do it now, not next year. Reduce your margins on RAM, SSD etc, just because you can squeeze out an extra $ in the short run it is hurting you in the long run. Don't solder RAM, make it upgradeable, use standard components.

There seems to be some sort of cyclic karma in the industry, the underdog earns too much money and forgets the customers, becoming complacent and evil.

This is exactly why I'm going the Hackintosh route. Better hardware at a much better price.

I needed an OSX machine for school, and after looking at the [expensive] offerings from Apple, I decided to go the Hackintosh route. I first turned a Surface Pro 1 into a Hackintosh running Yosemite. 95% of the machine worked flawlessly, the exception being the built-in wifi. Later, I moved to a Surface Pro 3, of which about 80% works (at this point I can have a battery meter or the touch screen, but not both simultaneously. I went with the touch screen). I love both of them, and use the SP3 on a daily basis. I also have a Hackintosh desktop running El Capitan which is faster, better, and less expensive than any of the equivalent Apple offerings.

You can put together a powerful Skylake based desktop for under $1000 using the CustoMac Buyer's Guide. It takes a lot of reading and some practice to get right at first, but once it's up and running you'll not regret it.

They certainly can. It's mostly a matter of selecting a compatible 802.11/Bluetooth card. Everything else you might stick in one is already on the OSX HCL. The processes for making a NUCintosh are pretty well documented and easy to find.

I jumped over to TonyMacx86.com and as of 4/12/16 they have moved the recomended CPU from Haswell/Broadwell to Skylake.
http://www.tonymacx86.com/buil...

For those that like to tinker and build your own Hackintoshes.

If you're looking for an alternative to the mini. Try an intel nuc hackintosh. I just built 4 of them and am very happy with performance (16GB RAM, EVO 850 SSD). http://www.tonymacx86.com/mave...

It's a shame, because I'd love a mini tower with at least three drive bays, built in CD burner

So build one. Hackintosh sites have been around for years, some giving monthly CPU/motherboard guides, and Apple has never gone on the warpath to shut them down. So long as you don't try and sell your Hackintosh commercially, they wont give a shit. If you have some moral problem with that, just buy one of their Dr. Dre headphones that are 95% profit if you want to give them some money.

Let's walk through building a similarly speced Hackintosh and set aside the build quality and all-in-one arguments for the moment.

(Massively cribbed from TonyMacx86.

Let's get as 3.2 GHz i5 for $200 (Core i5-4570).

We need a motherboard to plug it into. A Gigabyte for $142 will get us WiFi and some nice features (GA-Z87N).

8 gigs of RAM for $85 seems reasonable and compares to the target too. (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9)

A Bitfenix Prodigy is a nice case for $90. Here, you may be able to go cheaper, but you can certainly go more expensive. (BFC-PRO-300-WWXKW-RP)

A Corsair 500W power supply for $55 is pretty reasonable.

Although I'd prefer an SSD, we're comparing to a system with a 7200 RPM spinner. A Seagate Barracuda for $79 seems appropriate. (ST31000524AS)

I'm having trouble matching the GeForce 755M with my Wikipedia-Fu. A modest video card with twice the memory sets us back $100 (ASUS GT640). Hopefully the performance is similar, but I'm open to suggestions.

The barebones system is $751.

You can get a 27" IPS display from Monoprice, which Anandtech said badly needed calibration to be taken seriously (http://www.anandtech.com/show/7240/monoprice-zerog-slim-27-ips-monitor-review) for $390.

You can get a decent keyboard for $50, and a decent mouse for $50 (here, you can beat both by downgrading, but I use a trackball that's closer to $100).

The reference system excludes an optical drive, so we won't needlessly add one to compare, but includes an SDXC slot, whatever that is. Assembling all those spare parts above gets me to $1241, and excludes software (which is famously "free" now, but really is only free with the purchase of a licensed computer), but I can save $460 over the reference system.

I cheaped out on the screen, but for another $100, I could get a Dell that's got decent factor calibration. I don't have speakers -- $50 may be a good budget for what's in the iMac, I don't have a camera, but a Logitec C920 for $75 seems equivalent. Adding those back in gets me closer to $235 under the reference system.

My hand-built system isn't an all-in-one, which is a value to some. My hand-built system may not be as quiet, which is worth a premium too (I used higher-power desktop components instead of the laptop equivalents in the iMac), and I may use more electricity, increasing the TCO by as much as $0.05-$0.10 per day (wild guess) which adds up over a few years. All of this, the OS, iLife and iWork licenses plus the support of being able to walk into an Apple store is where the $235 goes toward. My iMac is 5.5 years old. I've replaced the hard drive 4 times (one died out of warranty, the replacement was slower than hell but free, replaced that with a faster spinner, replaced that with an SSD), and the number of Torx screws necessary to get to them is significant, but does not make it unserviceable. The memory in my wife's (same age) died at 5 years old, and that was a $40 replacement that took 5 minutes.

It is unfair to say that this is a $12 burger selling for $100 (when I go to the local restaraunt, I pay $9-$10 for a burger, and it comes with fries... Are you overpaying for your hamburger?).

Oh, come on. Why mod this down? This is comically pointing out the biggest problem with Mac Pros: the absolutely ridiculous price tag. When you can build a Hackintosh with twice the power for less than half the starting price of the Mac Pro line, there's something very wrong.

My Mac Pro wish is for a line refresh with a major price cut.

And here we go again.
You dont seem to get the point. Apple makes the computers, they make the software. That is why their computers is the most rock solid solution. I have now had a macbook pro for over two years!. And not one kernel panic!. Windows, hahahaha. those years of reinstalling and trying to figure out eh what the hells is the problem is gone. Id rather pay more for things that does not break!.

Oh, come on. Why mod this down? This is comically pointing out the biggest problem with Mac Pros: the absolutely ridiculous price tag. When you can build a Hackintosh with twice the power for less than half the starting price of the Mac Pro line, there's something very wrong.

My Mac Pro wish is for a line refresh with a major price cut.

For what it's worth, this is all the help you'll ever need. http://www.tonymacx86.com/ They have recommended builds, and a large community to help you with issues. 10 hours of research, 5 hours to build, and it was running smoothly.