The volume is there. Mac Pros are still using 6-core Westmere Xeons from 2010, while the competition such as Dell has moved to the latest 8-core Sandy Bridge-EP. There's just no comparing the CPU power, bus bandwidth and memory bandwidth of the two. The Mac is even using an older Intel chipset.
For $5,600 Dell will give you a dual 2.4-3.1 GHz 8-core Xeon with 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 ECC RAM and a 2.5 GB professional video card. Apple will give you a dual 2.9-3.3 GHz 6-core Xeon, 12 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC RAM and a 1 GB Radeon gaming card for $6,200. Professional workstations are about the horsepower and ISV certification, and Apple is sucking on both counts. And Apple can no longer even play in the league of the serious professional, offering only a mid-range gaming card and 7200 RPM SATA disk and SSD storage, while the Dell offers a 6 GB $3,000 pro card, and adds the option of 10K SAS drives, with a hardware RAID controller sporting its own dual-core PowerPC CPU and 1 GB of non-volatile cache. If you want fast storage on the Mac, you have to buy the fibre channel card and hook it up to a SAN. The Dell even has 3-year support and a Blu-ray burner included.
It's sad. A few years ago, the Mac Pro was the best workstation value on the market.
“It’s sad. A few years ago, the Mac Pro was the best workstation value on the market.”
For whatever reason (Thunderbolt?) Apple has elected to skip the Sandy Bridge Xeons and go with Ivy Bridge. I agree with you, it was bad to go so long without either an update or a price drop.
I think the video card situation will be better going forward as Apple switches to NVIDIA for this next round. I’m not sure there’s really a point in supporting the “pro” cards, as the only real difference is drivers except possibly at the very high end. We’ll see what Apple does there.
I’m hopeful that the Mac Pro refresh will include the long-rumored xMac, a “prosumer” mini-tower to sit between the iMac and the Mac Pros. That would boost Mac popularity quite a bit, IMO. With fresh thinking driving Apple forward, it seems quite possible.