[antiRepublicrat]

If you want to play with the bleeding edge stuff, you're probably out of luck.

That's the thing, Apple seems to get the bleeding-edge CPUs and chipsets before anyone else, retail or OEM. I tried to do a price comparison when they last upgraded the Mac Pro, but I couldn't find the chip at that FSB speed anywhere else. They showed up at Dell quite a while later in their workstations (which were more expensive than the Mac Pro BTW). Apple also got the small form factor CPU for the MacBook Air long before it was available to anyone else, although IIRC Apple asked Intel to design it so you'd think they'd get it first.

[tacticalogic]

That's the thing, Apple seems to get the bleeding-edge CPUs and chipsets before anyone else, retail or OEM. I'm talking about external peripherals and interfaces. Those typically get implemented via expansion cards before they find their way to the motherboard chipsets - eg SATA.