Mac Forum / General / Hardware / November 2007

Mostly because Apple doesn't (and can't, responsibly) buy memory
on-demand at current prices. Like every other system vendor, they buy
memory on extended contracts that are negotiated with one or more RAM
suppliers. Since the price of RAM *generally* drops, their contract
prices are rarely better than what consumers can get the day they
actually need it.

On rare occasions, Apple does offer a better price on an upgrade than an
after-market vendor does, and for some people, the cost of their time
makes Apple's premium smaller than the cost of doing it themselves with
RAM that's cheaper up-front.

Because enough people are willing to pay the price.

Its possible to do that with some PCI video cards for the G4 towers
and I've heard its possible to run several PCI-E cards in the Mac Pro.  
Google is your friend.  Keep searching and you should find a few.  And
save a ton.

Because a lot of Apple buyers seem to be lobotomized before they go
shopping.  I've never seen a more totally uninformed shopping
demographic in my life.   Compare ram and hard drive prices when
configuring your Mac Pro compared to tigerdirect or newegg.  You'd
think Apple was on a different planet.  The key to getting the best
performance, most reliability at the lowest cost is to buy the rock
bottom version of the Mac Pro ($2200 new now I think) new or used (duh
- used I guess if you can find one) then upgrade the processor, video
card, ram and hard drives as they become available used.  That Xeon
CPU is the headache.  Everything else is very easy to upgrade.  But
even Xeons plummet in price over time.  Just make sure you can sell
your old one otherwise the cost of upgrading it will be rather
significant.  Now if Apple got their head out of the sand and made a
Mac Mini-Pro with non-ECC, non-FB-Dimms running at 800mnz (like most
of the modern thinking world uses as they are so dirt cheap and offer
such great performance), that would cut the memory costs by about half
or more, then offer a Socket 775 motherboard that runs cheap but great
performing dual and quad core CPU's, and have a motherboard with built
on video (since this obviously costs the manufacturer almost zip and
can be conveniently used for an additional lower quality monitor in a
multi monitor setup and aiding Apple in additional monitor sales) and
at least a couple of PCI-E and PCI slots (for more additional Apple
sales as they could sell a slew of add-on cards), you'd have a machine
that would dwarf the Mac Pro sales as it would appeal to an immense
audience hungering for something between the Mini and the Mac Pro that
realizes how absurdly shortsighted it is buying an "all-in-one"
computer because when that screen goes, you're totally screwed.  We'll
see in early January if Apple wakes up or keeps on sleeping.  They
seem to be one stubborn company so its my bet they will leave that
gaping hole in their model line as wide as ever.  Hope I'm wrong
though.