Did you bother to look up prices for a typical Xeon multiprocessor workstation before deciding to slate the Mac Pro for being too expensive? If you had you might have discovered that 5 grand for 12 cores is pretty reasonable for typical workstation pricing. They don't build workstations out of "commodity components".

As for the iMac, are you forgetting you get a large IPS monitor as part of the package? If you're buying a midrange desktop you'll see pictures of it with a monitor, but you'll also quite often see the words "monitor not included" in the small print. Besides, Apple doesn't take bribes from Intel to slather their machines with logos, or from third party software makers to preload the machine with a ton of crapware, which is where most of the tin shifters make their profits. If you want to get rid of the crapware you'll have to wipe the machine and reformat it, and reinstall Windows from scratch. As computers never come with a Windows install disc anymore, you'll have to buy one, adding around a ton to the cost.

There's a world of difference between "too expensive" and "I can't afford one". Get a better paying job

Actually, since one of the major uses of a mac is content creation,i.e - photoshop / premiere, with the advent of the Mercury engine, having a high end nvidia card makes perfect sense.

No one's talking about MacBook Pro. The article is about Mac Pro, which is a desktop.

I think the negative comments about MacBook Pro is simple envy. When I originally bought mine (I got it refurbished)it was the fastest Windows laptop available for the price. Yes I said Windows laptop! After my Mac Book Pro which had a Nvidia graphic card failure 3 times ...that's 3 times! Apple gave me a Mac Book pro unibody for free. Hooray for Apple! However, my new MacBook Pro has 2 Nvidia graphic cards! Needless to say I bought the extended three year warranty. So if or more likely when one of the Nvidia graphics fail, I hope they replace it with the ATI 5870!

It's incredible the low level of value you get from buying a Mac Pro. Even the more zealous Macolyte can't justify the poor value of a Mac Pro and its commodity components at outrageous prices.

And why does Apple STILL show their "super drive" (i.e. $20 DVD-RW drive for $100) as one of the main features of the rig? Nobody cares about optical drives.

This hardware refresh will offer the same level of failure, as well as reaffirming that fools and their money are soon parted.

"Take a moment to realise that a £2,000 machine that is pitched as a workstation doesn't even have a workstation graphics card, nor is the 'consumer grade' Radeon HD 5770 graphics card the top of AMD's graphics card range."

If Apple Mac Pro users actually used CAD software, I could see the benefit of including a workstation graphics card, and if high-demanding video games were actually made for the Mac OS, I could see the need for a higher end ATI video card.

But neither of the above actually happen , so I believe that the HD 5770 isn't too bad of a choice. Personally, I'm more concerned with the lack of video card driver updates from Apple rather than the choice of the cards they use.

You can build your own that's twice as fast for half as much and buy a Apple OS X dvd online. Does anyone care it might not be legal? Only Job's and investors. I used to have an Imac and liked OS X.
The truth is I prefer Linux and the hardware I want.