What is with this wastefulness logic nonsense? I have had iMacs for the past six years; I'm on my third one (G5 -> Core duo -> Core 2 duo). I buy a new one and sell the old one on eBay. As we know, Macs hold onto their value much better than PCs (or ordinary monitors, for that matter), so I haven't really wasted anything here. By that logic, buying an ordinary PC is wasteful, since you could easily keep old memory chips, power supply and case; it is just as wasteful having to replace those perfectly good working parts just to upgrade the processor, hard drive, display card and audio card.

The argument about wastefulness of all-in-one concept just doesn't hold water.

I'll also have to agree with dynsight; Apple will NEVER withhold a specific product sub-category if there is a reasonable market for it. Just like glossy-matte screen debate, same goes here. Possible buyers for a "Headless" (mid-tower) Macs represent insignificant percentage of the addressable market, therefore you're just out of luck with Apple. So, either buy Windows, or get an iMac (or Mini, or Pro) and find a way to live with it.

The biggest problem comes in that they've priced the Mac Pro outside of the niche it should be able to fill. Fact is we have several sizes of MacBook Pros, why not have two sizes of Mac Pros? One with 8 or 16 or however many cores, in the current huge case with four hard drive bays, however many card slots, and so on and so forth, and then a more basic Mac Pro, a higher end desktop class CPU not a Xenon, just the higher end Core of the time, give it a couple RAM slots, one or two card slots, I'd still say four hard drive bays and then sell it. Either that or make a lower end model in the current case. Either way Apple would make a lot more off me if they released a Mac Pro that cost the same as a mid end iMac, I don't mind providing my own monitors fact is if I had a system like that I'd probably have three of them.

Apple is the smaller, perhaps leaner company, without the ridiculous number of products. HP and Dell can offer all of those products, since they sell a LOT MORE COMPUTERS.

Or, perhaps, they sell a lot more computers because they offer all those products.

But no one is asking Apple to go back to the days of the PowerMac 6331, 6335, 6336, etc, or be like Dell with 5 different types of towers. But to basically say "OK, the market desktop macs is either cheap small computer (which was sold as the "PC-switcher" computer) or a $3000 behemoth, or a computer with a built-in screen." And keep in mind apple even removed the 'matte' finish of the iMac, which means if you can't stand glossy screens, you're down to two choices.

In fact, the reason most people come up with for Apple not offering computers is to try to upsell users to higher-end computers. If they offered a mid-range tower, sales of the over-blown MacPros would shrink more than they currently are (and who knows how many of those they sell a quarter? A 100,000, if they're lucky? And you say there's no market for a mid-range?).

I'd like to see these pirate cloners go down the toilet ASAP. Enough already!

This notion that Apple is too small to produce 'niche' products is completely bogus. First and foremost, there are only 2 or 3 major Tech companies that have a higher market-cap than Apple, and further, the $25 Billion in cash that Apple has laying around is also more than all but a handful of Tech companies possess. Remember, Apple DOES NOT pay dividends on their stock either.

I have a 17" Sony laptop running OS X, without ANY issues. That laptop cost me LESS THAN HALF of what a comparable 17" Apple laptop would have cost me, and offers features Apple hasn't considered for their 17" machine.

For Apple to fill the product niches mentioned would require some R&D, some innovation, certainly NOTHING unfamiliar to them, nor out of their budget. I support the efforts of Pystar... nothing spurs innovation faster than competition, and the more 'niche' machines Pystar sells, the more pressure it will put on Apple to address those niches.

Remember, the clowns at Apple wouldn't even give us a two-button mouse until they realized that hoards of people were trashing the archaic 'one button Apple Mouse' in favor of more versatile products... Granted, their 'two button' solution is a heaping, steaming pile of c***, but at least they have begun to get the message.

GO PYSTAR!!

Why would you want them flushed?

Back in the original clone days, there was a little company in Texas called Power Computing. Instead of simply making 'clones,' this company took innovation of the Mac to new levels, putting incredible pressure on Apple, which was, at the time, in no position to respond. Gil Amelio was at the helm, and even though Apple had a bazillion models in their product line, they were making NOTHING that could compete with the high end offerings from Power Computing. Only the 'blind' devotion of the 'Apple Fan Boi' kept Power Computing from blowing Apple out of the water. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, one of his first orders of business was to purchase Power Computing so that they could plunder their technology, and remove them from the market as a competitor.

The existence of Power Computing and their limited success ultimately contributed to Apple producing better products.

It sounds to me like Psystar has the Apple Fan Boi quivering with paranoia. Nothing but good things come from competition, WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

Seriously, do these guys sell any machines? Isn't this all a bit academic?

What is with this wastefulness logic nonsense?

Wastefulness. As in "Computer breaks because of bad capacitors. Now monitor is useless". Or "Monitor breaks because of age. Computer is basically useless".

And, again, Macs hold value more than PCs because you've spent more on them than PCs. Plus, who's buying a two-year old PC for $600 when, for the same price as that, you can get a brand new one that's even better than that? You don't have those options with Macs, so the used market has a higher upside (assuming you don't get screwed on your ebay sale).

People must be buying them, otherwise they wouldn't waste their time trying to stay in business.

I wouldn't touch them, though, as they require hacking to get it to work. If I was in the market for a new mid-range tower, I'd go with an EFI-X model, that runs OS X unpatched.

Apple used to offer a low end Power Mac, which is what I used to always buy. My justification for wanting one was the expansion slots, and the ability to add things like an external monitor. For the most part, other then ram and a monitor I never added anything.

The price was about the same price as the higher end iMac: namely about $1, 599. I think Apple discounted that low end model of the Pro towers for two reasons. First, it likely found that this machine took away from iMac sales making it harder for Apple to control inventory. Second, this Apple move happened right about the time Apple moved away from offering the less expensive CRT monitors. The flat screens were quite expensive by comparison. I suspect that killed a lot of demand for the low end model pro towers because most people buying a new computer also want a new monitor. You aren't going to spend $1, 599 on the computer and spend another $900 for an Apple monitor (back when Apple first made this move it's lowest end flat screen monitor was more). One of course could go buy a third party inexpensive monitor, but it isn't made by Apple. People buying Apple products are mostly design conscious and don't want a quality Apple computer mismatched with an inexpensive Dell monitor. So, I think the demand for this middle tower wouldn't be as high as people think because most people want an accompanying inexpensive monitor that Apple is no longer offering.

Apple used to offer a low end Power Mac, which is what I used to always buy. My justification for wanting one was the expansion slots, and the ability to add things like an external monitor. For the most part, other then ram and a monitor I never added anything.

The price was about the same price as the higher end iMac: namely about $1, 599. I think Apple discounted that low end model of the Pro towers for two reasons. First, it likely found that this machine took away from iMac sales making it harder for Apple to control inventory. Second, this Apple move happened right about the time Apple moved away from offering the less expensive CRT monitors. The flat screens were quite expensive by comparison. I suspect that killed a lot of demand for the low end model pro towers because most people buying a new computer also want a new monitor. You aren't going to spend $1, 599 on the computer and spend another $900 for an Apple monitor (back when Apple first made this move it's lowest end flat screen monitor was more). One of course could go buy a third party inexpensive monitor, but it isn't made by Apple. People buying Apple products are mostly design conscious and don't want a quality Apple computer mismatched with an inexpensive Dell monitor. So, I think the demand for this middle tower wouldn't be as high as people think because most people want an accompanying inexpensive monitor that Apple is no longer offering.