Something's not right here. Apple traditionally hates cable mess (the main advertising point of the original iMac). A modular design has SO much duplication in chassis materials, fixtures, fittings, power and cooling. And assembly. These things would be very costly to make.  

It would be SO simple to make a modern cheese cutter. With SSD and no optical it would be smaller too, or leave room for even more expansion. There must be a reason why its taking so long. 

Could the delay be that they're waiting to go Arm? These enclosure designs last for years. The cheese grater lasted 10 years, G3/G4 7 years etc... 

Plus they had their fingers severely burned with the embarrassment of the current model which is in a sense 'modular'. It sounds like almost everyone on here wants an updated cheese grater and it seems so obvious that I can't imagine why Apple would make another, potentially humiliating, 'too clever' mistake. Just give the people what they want and need.

The cheese grater designs were expensive but I remember speccing PC's to similar levels and they very often came out cheaper on a like-for-like basis,. And I'll bet there aren't many 10 year old PC workstations still working away.

Just because you can doesn't always mean you should...

I always had a bit of a soft spot for the Microsoft Courier concept. I think 2 standard (glass) screens with a touch sensitive strip over the hinge area would work fine, allowing you to drag stuff from one screen to the other. It could also offer fixed touch sensitive buttons for cut/paste/home etc...

I'm assuming that this screen would have to be a soft plastic thing and just can't imagine it being as good to touch as glass (though it would be a lot less likely to break when dropped I suppose). 

There's not much in this at all. Considering the P3 is supposed to be head and shoulders ahead as the best camera I thought it was only really better on about 60% of the shots. I'm pleasantly surprised at the results from the XR which I expected to be totally outclassed.

One thing we have to remember here is that Apple is the SOLE provider of the hardware. We have no choice than to go with what they give us and I'm really losing patience with them. There are a load of PC manufacturers that will sell you a big box with plenty of room for expansion so every possible user is covered. Some fully specced PC's sell for well over $50k. You might say that it's a small market but Mac users have no choice at all in this department and it would be SO easy for Apple to fix it.

Apple is the most valuable company in the world. If they can't offer a line for pros one has to ask why not? The PC guys can. It's not hard. Big case. Plenty of slots and ports. Decent power supply. Job done. Apple could do this easily. Small PC outfits can to it easily at a profit. What can't Apple?

What's bugging the lift out of me is Apple's obsession with small. In everything. The 2013 Pro was a disaster because of this. I don't want a lovely, delicate machine that needs additional boxes for expansion and ends up with wires and plugs everywhere. It's going under my desk FFS. I don't care what it looks like.

Why doesn't Apple spin off a Mac hardware division that offers Pro boxes? If the market is that small it won't effect what they do just now but people who have a particular need for expansion will be catered for and can stay with macOS.

Steve Jobs was fond of saying that design is not only about how something looks but how it works too. Modern Apple would do well to remember this. Pro machines are not about how they look on the desk but how well they can serve you to build and create. The 2013 Mac Pro was almost entirely about how the thing looked which was crazy.

Please Apple, give us a simple box that offers the expansion possibilities users need and make the price fair too. I want to stay with Apple, I've been an Apple user since 1989 but for the first time I'm seriously looking at a Windows box which is just sad.