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Although the profit margin has increased, it isn't a notable difference. Xeon's don't drop in price by more than 10% over their lifetime for NIB parts.

Apple's high-end users are victims of Apple's success with phones and tablets. Although the absolute revenue from Mac Pro sales is likely increasing the relative contribution towards revenue is dropping like a rock. Apple, like any well-run company, invests resources in areas that benefit them the most. There is, however, great danger in becoming overly dependent on a single market segment. If for nothing other than reasonable diversification Apple should continue to invest in machines geared towards content creators (and not just content consumers).

Sadly, if you read books such as Innovator's Dilemma, you will realize how incredibly difficult it will be to make this happen. There is great inertia that must be overcome.

I was also greatly disappointed by the Mac Pro update and will continue hackintoshing along for my large memory needs working on stitched panos.

Ironically, the OSx86 scene could save Apple from themselves.

It's largely down to the maturing of the market...

A few years ago, you bought the most powerful system you could afford because a more powerful system made day to day things tolerable, let you do some things that were totally impractical on lower end hardware and provided a machine that would take a bit longer to become totally obsolete.

Now, for 99% of users a lowend piece of hardware is more than adequate to their needs... Only a small number of enthusiasts and specialist users require the high end equipment.

This is just another chapter in the Apple's war against general purpose computers. They will slowly kill their old "desktop" product line, and OSX, in favor of iOS and more restricted hardware.

Apple knows all too well that their tablets will soon become a competition against their own laptops as ARM processors get more powerful. And they don't want keep competing product lines.

The dead blow in Apple's old product line will be when they address the problem of how to productively develop software on a tablet while keeping all restrictions of that platform for the end users.

Apple has the most popular laptop on the market - indeed most of Apple's models are in the top 10 best selling laptops. Apple just introduced yet a new laptop which Thom and everyone is raving about. Apple has the best selling all in one desktop computer in the iMac.

And to assuage concerns about the Mac Pro Tim Cook today replied to some random persons email.

All these computers run Mac OS X (a *NIX derivative), Linux, and various version of Windows, NetBSD, and probably some other BSD's if your into that sort of thing.

Let's also add that Apple actively develops Mac OS X for said computers which is updated far more often and at a much lower cost them the only other consumer grade OS - Microsoft Windows. Apple just announced that $20 will get you an upgrade for as many machines as you own.

But hey, why bother with the facts and shit, right? Let's just go with FUD to play to the peanut gallery.

PS. The MacPro update was totally half assed as Thom said but it's more likely to do with the fact that it just does not make enough money for Apple to redesign the thing more often then some conspiracy theory.

Edited 2012-06-12 04:35 UTC

Honestly? I wouldn't be surprised if now that Jobs is gone Cook ends up dropping the pro line entirely. it simply isn't a big profit margin item and the cost to update the line, especially now that Intel has slit the throat of Nvidia and run them out of the chipset business, is simply not worth the effort expended.

Mark my words in a year or so Cook will proclaim the iPad 5 "The new mac" and other than a couple of consumer units macs will simply be phased out. With the consumer line frankly he can use ancient chips and nobody will care, because for consumers Intel has been insanely overpowered for several revs now. This is the opposite of the pros, who NEED the fastest chips they can get for content creation and media manipulation.

Even though I'm not an Apple guy I do feel bad for the pros, nobody likes spending a ton of money only to get support yanked out from under them, but when they turned FCP into iMovie and killed the Apple Server most pros should have seen the writing on the wall. It was Jobs that liked Apple being "The machine where movie magic is made" while Cook simply hasn't shown any care about that side at all.