jasonpwns :
Work class or not BMW the upgrade factor is still a major knock. On most workstations you can easily upgrade the graphics cards. Say your company just got an excellent deal on better workstation cards. On a non mac pro you can easily upgrade to those better cards. On a mac pro you have to buy a new macpro.
Actually, businesses don't upgrade graphics cards that much. Memory at times (which is do able here). Most business cannot run on unsupported hardware. They depreciate the hardware they buy over the course of 3 years and in some rare cases 5 years and then they replace the whole thing. They also cannot run on unsupported hardware for very long as these machines are an integral part of content creation. Also most manufacturers will not support the product with 3rd party hardware in it. You call them up and the first thing they blame is the part that did not come from them and they tell you to take it out before they can continue support. All manufacturers do it.
The smaller houses will keep hardware allot longer but their tasks don’t change all that much so their requirements stay fairly consistent. They upgrade the boxes for performance improvements and greater external expandability. Studios for example use the system as a hub of sort to attach to a ton of external devices. So this box is ideally designed for content creation.
Lastly, there are some upgrade ability tradeoffs here. This device is extremely upgradable, Just not as much internally. If you look at the back of the box there are 6 Thunderbolt 2 ports rated at 20Gbps. That is crazyness because Thunderbolt ports are tied directly to the PCI Express bus. What this means that because of the throughput you can use external graphics enclosures to add whatever you want along with any number of other devices that can tether to each other.
You won't be able to build a box with these specs or capabilities. Forget the pricing exercises, which has already been proven that this box is priced about right. You cannot build a box with the same capabilities when you consider the 6 thunderbolt 2 ports.
So when you guys try and put a equivalent build together you can forget trying to come close to the case design. SilverStone tech is the only one that makes something close but you would be hard pressed to find a mATX workstation class board with 802.11ac and a/b/g/n with 6 thunderbolt 2 ports along with 4 usb and dual gigabit ethernet interfaces.
All things considered, anyone that can suggest that they can build a box with OSX or Windows that is faster and more capable than this box does not know what they are talking about and are just pulling stuff out of their ass. Have no idea how these boxes are used nor understand how critical support ability is for anyone that makes a living on their workstation. There are only a few here that actually look at this with reason and did the research to actually compare and all of those that did found that what Apple has put together is a pretty solid offering bordering on almost being considered a value from a workstation perspective.
Just a bunch of blind hate for Apple from people that are about as technically credible as my 4 year old. My how TomsHardware has fallen over the years. I too have been building a reading TomsHardware since the 486 days. Definitely not the same place.
Oh and to the garbage can comments. Keep your dusty boxes with LED lights, Voltron aesthetics and let the real pros focus on being productive while you troubleshoot why your hard drive light stays on. If you tried to put a snot rag in this particular "trash can" it would get blown back in your face by the massive turbine fan that is in this thing. Entire system is cooled by one big fan.
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