I already said the exact same thing in an earlier article's comments. That exact price range. The answer IMHO is a what is basically an iMac without a screen in a mid-sized tower with BTO options from $2-4K. Four slots, options in CPUs (not sure of i5 through i9 or even Xeon is feasible) and GPUs, both replaceable, user accessible RAM slots and a host of I/Os using the latest standards. Optional Apple Keyboard with touch bar.
This would be for serious amateurs and self-employed professionals that cannot justify the new Mac Pro which again IMHO will not sell many entry-level versions since any pro working with a good budget will want that beast upgraded at least to a mid range at around $12,000 or more. That's not a lot in the video, printing/graphics industries.
The $2K I'd save over an entry-level Mac Pro would go on the new Sony 200-600mm G lens
What's wrong with the base Mac Pro? Isn't that what you're asking for? Add your own monitor and you have a headless iMac Pro with the ability to grow. If you want fewer RAM slots, a non-Xeon processor, and still want internal expansion, then you'll need to pay for those features. I think the iMac Pro is a fantastic computer and it's still expandable, just not inside the enclosure, everything has to be added externally, which is also the way many things would be added to the Mac Pro.
iMacPro. How do I expand the RAM externally? No external graphics card will beat the internal dGPU. External storage usually isn't SSDs so that's never usually a problem.
What this article is saying is people are looking for a Lego Mac, plan and simple. People want to reach into a box of pretty color pieces and assemble exactly what they think they want, they do not want Apple making the decision for them.
There are so many so-called experts who think they can easily weight all the variables and make the most optimize computer to deal with the one specific issue no one else seem to have. To those few individual, no one stopping you from building your own computer, anyone can start up a computer company and solve the worlds problems. Michael Dell did it in his dorm room and Steve & Steve did it in their parents garage. Stop complaining and demanding Apple do it your way, just start your own company.
Great article! This is exactly my position right now. I reluctantly bought a late 2013 iMac, one of the last models with nvidia GPUs, as a stop gap while I waited for a modular mac to come around. It's been a long wait and I thought finally this was the year. I'm a CG artist, one of the few still using a mac, and there aren't any macs in Apple's line up for my needs. It's either build a hackintosh (which I really don't want to because I'm not a tinkerer, I really want a mac that I don't have to troubleshoot all day) or bite the bullet and make the jump to Windows. I've used a mac for 20 years and I've never felt like I had to leave the ecosystem - it's just depressing.
What this article is saying is people are looking for a Lego Mac, plan and simple. People want to reach into a box of pretty color pieces and assemble exactly what they think they want, they do not want Apple making the decision for them.
If a get a mb pro with a 256 GB SSD today, I might think that's all I need. But years from now, my usage patterns may change, and SSDs on the market may have dropped so much in price that buying a 2 TB SSD is economical. Say I don't need anymore processing power, but just a larger SSD. I won't be able to upgrade my internal storage using a 2018/19 mbpro. But I could upgrade a 2009 mbpro's storage. Why does the lack of expandability make sense to some people? Yeah there's thunderbolt 3, but having to attach external storage is not necessarily ideal for everyone. I just want apple to bring expandability back...
What are others' thoughts on whether it makes sense (or not) for Apple's design decision to stop developing expandable Macs? Some users will never open their Macs, others will want to tinker. But older Macbook Pros circa-2009 were expandable in some ways (users could swap out their SATA HDDs for SATA SDDs, and could also upgrade the RAM). Why take away expandability from macOS users? It's not like we have other macOS hardware suppliers to officially choose from.
On the desktop front, Apple could totally market a monitor-less midrange desktop that is more powerful than the mini, but not as powerful as the pro, but is expandable.
And they could simply call it the Macintosh (aka xMac): - Standard NVME M.2 connectors - Less PCI-E slots than the Mac Pro - Non ECC DIMM slots - Support for LGA 1151 Intel Core Processors (e.g., Coffee Lake Core i9-9900k) - User-expandable
Until Apple markets an expandable Mac, I'm perfectly fine with my midrange (EXPANDABLE) Hackintosh.
As Apple no longer caters for my needs I've been thinking of going down the Hackintosh route. I'm reasonably handy around computers but worry about reliability, crashes, application issues etc... and especially updates. Could you possibly give a quick rundown of how you have found the process yourself?
Or just to drive this disparity home, look at it another way. From $0 to $999, Apple sells one desktop Mac. From $1,000 to $1,999, it sells one desktop Mac.
From $2,000 to $4,998, it sells none.
If this were just about how much money you'd like to give Apple, please, then you could configure different models. Or you could buy MacBooks in their various forms. The starting cost of those is $1,199 for the MacBook Air, $1,299 for the MacBook and also for the base MacBook Pro.
There are no desktop Macs or MacBooks with a base entry price between $1,300 and $4,998.
This entire premise is flawed. The 27" iMac 5k starts at $1800-2300, and from there you can configure it with beefier hardware options -- CPU, GPU, SSD... Excluding RAM since people like to buy third-party and DIY, but here we go:
....and no, it's not "just about how much money you'd like to give Apple", it's about the computing resources you get in return. You know, the whole thing you're complaining about?
If configuring the iMac 5k into a beefier computer ins't the solution, then it sounds like what you really want is a hobbyist tower. I'm not sure we'll ever see that from Apple.
Why does anyone need expandability. Apple knows what you need, better than you do. Pay attention to what they give you, and you'll be just fine.
Oh yeah, /s
The typical, point-missing straw man. Apple has never claimed they know what you need better than you. Rather, they claim to know what they wish to sell, to the most people. If that's you, great! If that's not you, there are alternatives -- like PCs. Or crying on the internet. Whatever works best for you.
Not going to happen. With all the BTO options now available, there actually is a pretty smooth gradation from low-end to high and a reasonable cross-over point from the iMac to iMac Pro.
There’s also that nice 4-quadrant view of entry/pro and modular/all-in-one. Like it or not the Mac Mini is your modular option with external components fleshing out anything you can’t build to order. I would love if that also included a midrange display but I’m pretty sure it won’t.
The Mac range is in a better state than it has been for ages (particularly if they replace the MacBook Pro soon with something slightly more flexible). Expect incremental upgrades across rear of the line only for the next couple of years.
Yeah, the BTO options certainly allow buyers to option-up MacMini, iMac, and MacBook Pro based models to fill in a lot of what this article identifies as gaps in price-performance targets. The price deltas mentioned are in-fact filled with BTO configurations, except on the very low end, e.g. 0-$999. However, I do agree that Apple does not currently offer, and hasn't offered for a very long time, a mid-range internally expandable Mac that competes head-to-head with Windows towers and mini-towers. Even then, I suspect that the vast majority of Windows PC buyers never pop the lid on their towers and mini-towers after selecting the base set of components at the time of purchase. There are still post-purchase benefits of having internally modifiable and replaceable components from a repairability and upgradeability standpoint, but again, you're probably into a very small percentage of buyers who actually take advantage of this capability.
Apple is doing its best where it needs to be doing its best at serving a broad base of customer's needs. There will always be niches that Apple goes after to bolster its public image and flex its muscles as a technology leader even when the numbers don't add up. However, there will always be some unfilled niches that Apple can afford to overlook because the ROI, financially and from a street cred standpoint, just don't make it worth their investment. Apple doesn't expect to have 100% market share, so why chase the law of diminishing returns in a strive for perfection when it is always unattainable?
Exactly - Apple already sells a very profitable line of computers (the most profitable, I believe). They don't need to compete with Dell and DIY hobbyist towers. Those aren't the machine's they'd build for themselves, so they don't feel the need to compete in that space.
Great article! This is exactly my position right now. I reluctantly bought a late 2013 iMac, one of the last models with nvidia GPUs, as a stop gap while I waited for a modular mac to come around. It's been a long wait and I thought finally this was the year. I'm a CG artist, one of the few still using a mac, and there aren't any macs in Apple's line up for my needs. It's either build a hackintosh (which I really don't want to because I'm not a tinkerer, I really want a mac that I don't have to troubleshoot all day) or bite the bullet and make the jump to Windows. I've used a mac for 20 years and I've never felt like I had to leave the ecosystem - it's just depressing.
Can you explain why the beefier iMac 5k BTO options or the iMac Pro won't provide the value you're looking for, whereas your 2013 iMac does? So confused.
What this article is saying is people are looking for a Lego Mac, plan and simple. People want to reach into a box of pretty color pieces and assemble exactly what they think they want, they do not want Apple making the decision for them.
make macs expandable again.
You do realize Jobs was staunching opposed to expandable, hobbyist Macs, going back to the very first one, right?. From original Macintosh team member Andy Hertzfeld:
"Expandability, or the lack thereof, was far and away the most controversial aspect of the original Macintosh hardware design."
"Apple's other co-founder, Steve Jobs, didn't agree with Jef about many things, but they both felt the same way about hardware expandability: it was a bug instead of a feature. Steve was reportedly against having slots in the Apple II back in the days of yore, and felt even stronger about slots for the Mac. He decreed that the Macintosh would remain perpetually bereft of slots, enclosed in a tightly sealed case, with only the limited expandability of the two serial ports."
...it just wasn't designed to enable tinkerers & hobbyists. It was a step toward the goal of appliance-computing.
This. So much this.
I'm happy that the new Mac Pro exists, and if I ever win the lottery I might put one in every room just because I can (I wouldn't). It would be nice to have an affordable tower that you can put internal storage into and change the GPU should you want to. That's all.
I love my iMac 5K, but it is not expandable at all, and extremely cumbersome to upgrade the whole machine.
Apple should be offering a base model of the Mac Pro for $2999 and a 27" 5K display for $999.
That is well within my budgetary range for a work Mac. And it would get me a lot more mileage than an of-the-shelf iMac will. I would be happy to put another $1000/year or so into the machine for upgrades for the next 5-10 years. So in 10 years, it would still be a beast with relatively modern components.
----
The actual product delivered from Apple is perfectly fine for some people. It is not overpriced for what it offers. Not even close. Unfortunately it offers too much for most Pros.
Sadly, I think this is the latest example of Apple's greedy pattern of pushing everyone toward spending more. They've had (some) success with delivering products that are way over what the market indicates they're willing to pay...and getting them to pay it anyway. Here they think they can convince (some) Pros to up their game, break their bank, and buy more than they need to get into expandability range.
This is why the xMac will never happen because it eats into iMac sales. Instead of a 3-4 year replacement cycle for iMac replacement it becomes 5-10 years for the xMac. That $1000/year upgrade won't go to Apple. Neither will the majority of monitor sales.
Is that Apple being "greedy" or just smart? I dunno...but they outlasted a lot of PC manufacturers and I'd like them to keep making Macs and MacOS.
Apple isn't "missing" anything in their lineup. People are whining at the price point of the Mac Pro because they want an even lower TCO for a system that already has a lower TCO than a Windows box.
In the 90's graphic and website designers were a core, possibly THE core, audience that stuck with Apple through the dark days. Now I feel completely abandoned. If I move to Windows I can get a superb, expandable machine for around 2K that has proper graphics, multiple internal drives, and real power.
The core now is students and regular people who can meet all their computing needs with a MacBook or even an iPad. And for those people who still use desktops, Apple sells a number of models. The Mac product line is more robust than it's been in a decade or more.
As much as I would love some sort of desktop mac that features the i9 Processor, has 8 standard ram slots, two M2 SSD slots, 4 sata slots and 3 or 4 PCI slots, I just don't think Apple will ever go there again.
It's kind of a lose/losesituation for them. Either it would be a machine that would equal a generic PC in a certain price segment, say around 2000, but it would cost at least 3500, meaning everyone and their moms would bitch about the "Apple Tax" or they would sell it for close to 2000, have horrible margins (just like the rest of the PC industry), while cannibalising a lot of iMac 5K sales. With the new Mac Pro, at least when compared to a hypothetical PC build with similar class components, they aren't THAT much more expensive, and they also have a bunch of unique features that you can't currently get elsewhere. With the iMac Pro, it's the same thing, there are no standard all in one PC's to compare it to. And the iMac 5K is actually quite good value for the money considering the screen you're getting with it and how nice it looks. I just don't see a way that they could make the xMac, have it be unique enough to not get stuck in a bad looking comparison to PC builds AND have healthy margins. But I hope I'm wrong. In the meantime, I'm all good with my Hackintosh, until a few years from now when all newer Macs have the T2 (or T3, 4, 5 by then) and the latest version of MacOS is completely locked down.
Apple's healthy margins are normally 30-40%, right? So why would an xMac that Apple can build for $2000 need to be sold for $3500? A 40% margin on a computer that costs $2000 to build would be $2800.
And if Apple can build a Mac Pro that is competitive with PC hardware, and have acceptable profits, why couldn't they do the same mid-tier? Apple's industrial design and software are always a pretty good differentiator.
Ok, my numbers where a bit exaggerated.
I agree that Apple's software is a big differentiator (for me it's THE differentiator that determines everything) and their industrial design is definitely top notch. However, my main point still stands: I just don't think it would make economic and especially marketing sense for them to do it.
Like many have already pointed out, the target group for such a machine are quite small (yet very vocal), so it's not worth spending too much resources designing it.
Most of the people who would buy it would have otherwise been mini or iMac customers so not many sales gained, only product line complexity.
There isn't much room for Apple's kind of innovation in such a machine. With the new Pro they were able to go all out with innovative thermals, graphics packages etc. That would have to be cut for this machine, and also, depending on processor model, it would not be needed anyway.
So what's left? A regular box that is just a little prettier than most? The remaining target group (that absolutely can't make due with an iMac or a Mac Mini but also cannot afford the new Pro) don't really care at all how the machine looks, so I would say that industrial design does not make a significant differentiator for this group. I would know since I myself sit exactly in this group (music producer/mixer who built my own hackintosh because this kind of mac does not exist).
If Apple were to actually make this machine, they would gain a very small number of total sales to people like me, but their image would take a huge hit in the media. All the techie boys would scream bloody murder about how it's just a regular PC but more expensive. Apple wouldn't have any innovative coolness to back it up with. And it would be easy to design a box with the exact same specs and "prove" how Apple rips you off. Not gonna happen.
xMac: -Mac Pro Chassis -i9 Processor -2 channel non-ECC RAM -Lower wattage power supply -Fewer PCI slots -No MPX support
Problem solved.
Obviously Apple has run the numbers and determined that that is a "problem" that doesn't need solving--or creates problems for Apple the company that it choose to avoid. If they haven't chosen to have a product in this segment up to this point, what would cause them to change their minds now? I'm pretty sure the answer is "nothing."
What are others' thoughts on whether it makes sense (or not) for Apple's design decision to stop developing expandable Macs? Some users will never open their Macs, others will want to tinker. But older Macbook Pros circa-2009 were expandable in some ways (users could swap out their SATA HDDs for SATA SDDs, and could also upgrade the RAM). Why take away expandability from macOS users? It's not like we have other macOS hardware suppliers to officially choose from.
On the desktop front, Apple could totally market a monitor-less midrange desktop that is more powerful than the mini, but not as powerful as the pro, but is expandable.
And they could simply call it the Macintosh (aka xMac): - Standard NVME M.2 connectors - Less PCI-E slots than the Mac Pro - Non ECC DIMM slots - Support for LGA 1151 Intel Core Processors (e.g., Coffee Lake Core i9-9900k) - User-expandable
Until Apple markets an expandable Mac, I'm perfectly fine with my midrange (EXPANDABLE) Hackintosh.
As Apple no longer caters for my needs I've been thinking of going down the Hackintosh route. I'm reasonably handy around computers but worry about reliability, crashes, application issues etc... and especially updates. Could you possibly give a quick rundown of how you have found the process yourself?
My Hackintosh is beautiful, it is extremely stable. I run Serato and plugin my dj-controller and nothing ever crashes. I don't know what software you're gonna use, so I can't vouch for other software like Logic Pro, etc. My Hackintosh goes to sleep when I'm not using it; I haven't restarted in over 2 months. The only time I ever restart is either when I update macOS, or when I need to use Windows. My only gripe is as of macOS 10.14, macOS stopped supporting nVidia graphics cards...something to be aware of.
The hardest part about Hackintoshing is the initial learning curve to get things setup and running (e.g., installing the proper bootloader, ensuring that the mobo settings are set appropriately, installing the necessary kexts/SSDTs). But once you get the hang of it, it's smooth sailing. I'd recommend doing your research before purchasing your specific hardware. Most recent Intel Z-series (mainstream) mobos are supported (i.e., z170, z270, z370, z390, etc). But in regards to wifi/bluetooth/LANand other add-in cards, you have to ensure before you buy your hardware that the requisite macOS kexts/drivers are available so you can use them with macOS. There is a pretty vibrant community out there and you will find the information you need.
The process of setting up a hackintosh isn't remotely as simple as just going to the Apple store and buying a Mac. You will likely be frustrated at first. But if you're persistent, you will also figure things out.
What's interesting while non-Apple hardware isn't officially supported, it appears that Hackintoshing has helped make macOS better over time. For example, macOS 10.12 didn't natively support most NVME SSDs on the market formatted with a logical block size of less than 4096 bytes (Windows and Linux had support for such drives). Which means you couldn't plug and play out-of-the-box Samsung 950 evo with macOS 10.12. Apple's lack of proper support for standard NVME drives was puzzling and was exposed by the Hackintosh community. Surprisingly, as of 10.13, Apple upgraded their kernel for supporting non-Apple NVME SSDs. That's why it's confusing (to me atleast) that Apple designs its macbook pros or even their Mac Pro with non-standard SSD connectors... the OS itself already supports standard NVME so why have non-standard connectors? Go figure.
I made this exact case in one of the previous teeth-gnashing threads about the new Mac Pro. There's a pretty obvious slot in the lineup.
Being business-minded, Apple is introducing the new Mac Pro first, and holding off on the xMac or perhaps just Mac (what a novel name), so as not to undercut sales of the more powerful, more expensive model by simultaneously releasing the less expensive option.
A year or so after sales start for the Mac Pro, they'll offer a slightly more powerful model of that, plus a new Mac, the specs and price point of which may be somewhat tailored based on the initial sales of various configurations of the new Mac Pro.
The people upset about this machine are really upset. My question is how big is the market for those who don’t want an iMac Pro or Mac mini but the Mac Pro is too much machine/too expensive for them. I’m talking about people who need this for their job, not hobbyists/enthusiasts who just want to tinker. I don’t think Apple will waste time on the tinkerer market. If you can get your work done with an iMac Pro or Mac mini that’s what Apple expects you to use.
I agree that Apple doesn't want to cater to the hobbyist/enthusiast/tinkerer market segment, but that doesn't mean that they're negligible vs the higher end "Pros", at least in the olden days where the MSRP of the basic PowerMac / Mac Pro box was half of what it is now today. And similarly, Apple does not honestly offer real 'Pro' class product support after purchase - - they're still very much a "consumer"-class corporation. For example, Apple doesn't sell at any price an on-site repair/warranty service plan, let alone an <8 hour one instead of a <24 hour one.
Moving back to the hardware discussion for this 'prosumer' customer class, the consideration of the non-Mac Pros is distasteful, as the ability to tailor it to workflow needs is technically possible, but ends up being both ungainly and expensive.
---------------------------------
Case in point, for my personal (not work) Mac Pro ... its (aftermarket, obviously) SSD-based boot drive has been higher performance than SATA-3 for the past half dozen years, which means that the 2019 iMac 5K is still functionally a step backwards in base I/O bandwidth performance. Even so, I consider it to probably be a better option by comparison vs the mini or iMac Pro due to other trade-off considerations.
For all of the options, the status quo has a clean look because its 17TB of local data storage is internal, running off of a single 110VAC plug and UPS power supply - - not a stack of external drives, which adds roughly +35% to the price of storage.
For the iMac Pro, I already have a 27" Apple monitor, and my home office doesn't have the room to move to a dual-display setup, so there's that. FWIW, since I'm able to keep the hardware secure, I don't need (nor do I care for the IT management risks of) the encryption from the T2 chip. The basic "replace current" costs here would be roughly $5400 for an iMac Pro + $1100 (TB3 Promise R4) + $500 (slow external USB3's) = ~$7K. Costs should actually go higher if I split the R4 to add in a higher-performance NVMe SSD RAID to have the new machine's data segment be higher performance than the current status quo instead of merely its equal.
The mini would save around $2400, for ~$5K out the door, but there's a lot of questions there on thermal throttling due to its form factor, which I know I wouldn't have if I just finally bite the bullet and move anther machine over to Windows, at roughly the same $5K cost .. and also gain back in-house maintainability that doesn't exist with any of these closed-box Apple "consumer grade" products. FYI, the 27" iMac 5K works out to about the same ~$5K as the mini, but with 3rd Party RAM to allow it to be configured to 128GB RAM.
Lastly, the new Mac Pro, it is $6K for the upfront buy-in. At only 256GB for the boot drive and with no 512GB option, so how much will its 1TB boot SSD be? Based on the iMac Pro, I estimate at least +$600. Bumping RAM to 64GB will probably be +$1K (IBID). I doubt that Promise's new internal HDD RAID module(s) will be any cheaper than its current TB3 externals, so I'll assume the same $1100 price point here. Ditto for random low performance data (remote site backups) for +$500 as before. This puts its starting point (without any monitor) at $9.2+K, which is +30% (+$2K) higher than the augmented iMac Pro and, for the mini, +85% (+$4K) ...nearly twice the total system price.
Overall, for my "not-Hollywood 8K HD video" workflow needs, there's simply not sufficient justification in capability enhancements to spend more than $5K overall to modernize, particularly from a 'prosumer' perspective, there isn't the business revenue factor at all to provide a rationale. YMMV.
Great article and I agree it's spot on and why my daily driver is an i9 Hackintosh. My 2018 MBP is a great machine but my Hackintosh is beastly fast and a dream to use when in the office. If Apple offered the xMac as described I'd buy it immediately over my Hackintosh...
This article is what it is - but at the end of the day the current lineup is all about Apple future proofing profits. By taking away expansion and upgrade capabilities, users have to upgrade more often.
The problem with the cheese-grater was that it was perfect. Users were able to keep them going for 2 or 3 or 4 generations longer by doing their own upgrades.
Apple has intentionally designed their lineup not to benefit their users - but to maximize profits. End of story.
Comments
There are so many so-called experts who think they can easily weight all the variables and make the most optimize computer to deal with the one specific issue no one else seem to have. To those few individual, no one stopping you from building your own computer, anyone can start up a computer company and solve the worlds problems. Michael Dell did it in his dorm room and Steve & Steve did it in their parents garage. Stop complaining and demanding Apple do it your way, just start your own company.
make macs expandable again.
....and no, it's not "just about how much money you'd like to give Apple", it's about the computing resources you get in return. You know, the whole thing you're complaining about?
If configuring the iMac 5k into a beefier computer ins't the solution, then it sounds like what you really want is a hobbyist tower. I'm not sure we'll ever see that from Apple.
The typical, point-missing straw man. Apple has never claimed they know what you need better than you. Rather, they claim to know what they wish to sell, to the most people. If that's you, great! If that's not you, there are alternatives -- like PCs. Or crying on the internet. Whatever works best for you.
EOS.
You do realize Jobs was staunching opposed to expandable, hobbyist Macs, going back to the very first one, right?. From original Macintosh team member Andy Hertzfeld:
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Diagnostic_Port.txt
"Expandability, or the lack thereof, was far and away the most controversial aspect of the original Macintosh hardware design."
"Apple's other co-founder, Steve Jobs, didn't agree with Jef about many things, but they both felt the same way about hardware expandability: it was a bug instead of a feature. Steve was reportedly against having slots in the Apple II back in the days of yore, and felt even stronger about slots for the Mac. He decreed that the Macintosh would remain perpetually bereft of slots, enclosed in a tightly sealed case, with only the limited expandability of the two serial ports."
...it just wasn't designed to enable tinkerers & hobbyists. It was a step toward the goal of appliance-computing.
Is that Apple being "greedy" or just smart? I dunno...but they outlasted a lot of PC manufacturers and I'd like them to keep making Macs and MacOS.
Apple isn't "missing" anything in their lineup. People are whining at the price point of the Mac Pro because they want an even lower TCO for a system that already has a lower TCO than a Windows box.
I agree that Apple's software is a big differentiator (for me it's THE differentiator that determines everything) and their industrial design is definitely top notch. However, my main point still stands: I just don't think it would make economic and especially marketing sense for them to do it.
Like many have already pointed out, the target group for such a machine are quite small (yet very vocal), so it's not worth spending too much resources designing it.
Most of the people who would buy it would have otherwise been mini or iMac customers so not many sales gained, only product line complexity.
There isn't much room for Apple's kind of innovation in such a machine. With the new Pro they were able to go all out with innovative thermals, graphics packages etc. That would have to be cut for this machine, and also, depending on processor model, it would not be needed anyway.
So what's left? A regular box that is just a little prettier than most? The remaining target group (that absolutely can't make due with an iMac or a Mac Mini but also cannot afford the new Pro) don't really care at all how the machine looks, so I would say that industrial design does not make a significant differentiator for this group. I would know since I myself sit exactly in this group (music producer/mixer who built my own hackintosh because this kind of mac does not exist).
If Apple were to actually make this machine, they would gain a very small number of total sales to people like me, but their image would take a huge hit in the media. All the techie boys would scream bloody murder about how it's just a regular PC but more expensive. Apple wouldn't have any innovative coolness to back it up with. And it would be easy to design a box with the exact same specs and "prove" how Apple rips you off. Not gonna happen.
The hardest part about Hackintoshing is the initial learning curve to get things setup and running (e.g., installing the proper bootloader, ensuring that the mobo settings are set appropriately, installing the necessary kexts/SSDTs). But once you get the hang of it, it's smooth sailing. I'd recommend doing your research before purchasing your specific hardware. Most recent Intel Z-series (mainstream) mobos are supported (i.e., z170, z270, z370, z390, etc). But in regards to wifi/bluetooth/LANand other add-in cards, you have to ensure before you buy your hardware that the requisite macOS kexts/drivers are available so you can use them with macOS. There is a pretty vibrant community out there and you will find the information you need.
The process of setting up a hackintosh isn't remotely as simple as just going to the Apple store and buying a Mac. You will likely be frustrated at first. But if you're persistent, you will also figure things out.
What's interesting while non-Apple hardware isn't officially supported, it appears that Hackintoshing has helped make macOS better over time. For example, macOS 10.12 didn't natively support most NVME SSDs on the market formatted with a logical block size of less than 4096 bytes (Windows and Linux had support for such drives). Which means you couldn't plug and play out-of-the-box Samsung 950 evo with macOS 10.12. Apple's lack of proper support for standard NVME drives was puzzling and was exposed by the Hackintosh community. Surprisingly, as of 10.13, Apple upgraded their kernel for supporting non-Apple NVME SSDs. That's why it's confusing (to me atleast) that Apple designs its macbook pros or even their Mac Pro with non-standard SSD connectors... the OS itself already supports standard NVME so why have non-standard connectors? Go figure.
Being business-minded, Apple is introducing the new Mac Pro first, and holding off on the xMac or perhaps just Mac (what a novel name), so as not to undercut sales of the more powerful, more expensive model by simultaneously releasing the less expensive option.
A year or so after sales start for the Mac Pro, they'll offer a slightly more powerful model of that, plus a new Mac, the specs and price point of which may be somewhat tailored based on the initial sales of various configurations of the new Mac Pro.
I agree that Apple doesn't want to cater to the hobbyist/enthusiast/tinkerer market segment, but that doesn't mean that they're negligible vs the higher end "Pros", at least in the olden days where the MSRP of the basic PowerMac / Mac Pro box was half of what it is now today. And similarly, Apple does not honestly offer real 'Pro' class product support after purchase - - they're still very much a "consumer"-class corporation. For example, Apple doesn't sell at any price an on-site repair/warranty service plan, let alone an <8 hour one instead of a <24 hour one.
Moving back to the hardware discussion for this 'prosumer' customer class, the consideration of the non-Mac Pros is distasteful, as the ability to tailor it to workflow needs is technically possible, but ends up being both ungainly and expensive.
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Case in point, for my personal (not work) Mac Pro ... its (aftermarket, obviously) SSD-based boot drive has been higher performance than SATA-3 for the past half dozen years, which means that the 2019 iMac 5K is still functionally a step backwards in base I/O bandwidth performance. Even so, I consider it to probably be a better option by comparison vs the mini or iMac Pro due to other trade-off considerations.
For all of the options, the status quo has a clean look because its 17TB of local data storage is internal, running off of a single 110VAC plug and UPS power supply - - not a stack of external drives, which adds roughly +35% to the price of storage.
For the iMac Pro, I already have a 27" Apple monitor, and my home office doesn't have the room to move to a dual-display setup, so there's that. FWIW, since I'm able to keep the hardware secure, I don't need (nor do I care for the IT management risks of) the encryption from the T2 chip. The basic "replace current" costs here would be roughly $5400 for an iMac Pro + $1100 (TB3 Promise R4) + $500 (slow external USB3's) = ~$7K. Costs should actually go higher if I split the R4 to add in a higher-performance NVMe SSD RAID to have the new machine's data segment be higher performance than the current status quo instead of merely its equal.
The mini would save around $2400, for ~$5K out the door, but there's a lot of questions there on thermal throttling due to its form factor, which I know I wouldn't have if I just finally bite the bullet and move anther machine over to Windows, at roughly the same $5K cost .. and also gain back in-house maintainability that doesn't exist with any of these closed-box Apple "consumer grade" products. FYI, the 27" iMac 5K works out to about the same ~$5K as the mini, but with 3rd Party RAM to allow it to be configured to 128GB RAM.
Lastly, the new Mac Pro, it is $6K for the upfront buy-in. At only 256GB for the boot drive and with no 512GB option, so how much will its 1TB boot SSD be? Based on the iMac Pro, I estimate at least +$600. Bumping RAM to 64GB will probably be +$1K (IBID). I doubt that Promise's new internal HDD RAID module(s) will be any cheaper than its current TB3 externals, so I'll assume the same $1100 price point here. Ditto for random low performance data (remote site backups) for +$500 as before. This puts its starting point (without any monitor) at $9.2+K, which is +30% (+$2K) higher than the augmented iMac Pro and, for the mini, +85% (+$4K) ...nearly twice the total system price.
Overall, for my "not-Hollywood 8K HD video" workflow needs, there's simply not sufficient justification in capability enhancements to spend more than $5K overall to modernize, particularly from a 'prosumer' perspective, there isn't the business revenue factor at all to provide a rationale. YMMV.