Oh, Mac mini tower, wherefore art thou?

Another Mac update and speed bump has come and gone. No quad core chip from Intel. No MacPro mini tower. What am I to do with all this money I have to buy a Mac that doesn’t exist? Be still my heart. The new iMac isn’t that bad. It’s good. Just not good enough.

A New Mac

I am ready for a new Mac. I just can’t quite afford the full power of a MacPro with eight cores. Yet, even the newly updated iMac leaves me weak, wanting more. Apple on the iMac:

Just when you thought iMac had everything, now there’s even more. More powerful Intel Core 2 Duo processors. And more memory standard.

The high end iMac comes with a 3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2 gigs of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and an NVIDIA GeForece 8800 GS graphics card with a whopping 512MB of video RAM.

Yet, the new iMac pales before the luscious speed demon MacPro with eight cores of Xeon goodness, so powerful a second mortgage is required to own one. Even the single quad core MacPro, without a display, starts at $2,300, with smaller hard drive, and less capable graphics card.

Dilemma

What’s a girl to do? A comparably equipped MacPro with a mere quad core Intel inside CPU, a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display HD, without an iSight camera, heads into the stratosphere at almost $3,500.

And that’s playing second fiddle to the real power demons. Apple on the MacPro:

Incredible 8-core performance, up to 3.2GHz, is available with two Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors. Or configure a quad-core system consisting of one 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor.

The Gap

Consider the gap. The difference between the low end MacPro and the high end iMac would buy a second iMac with a 20-inch display.

‘O Mac mini tower, wherefore art thou?’

Alas, my love is not yet to be fulfilled, yet Intel fills Apple’s warehouse with a newer than new chip inside, a special processor which matches the specs on the not yet released 45 nm Core 2 Duo Extreme X9100 ‘Montevina.’

Apple is selling a Mac with an Intel chip not yet sold by Apple’s PC competitors. Should that not make me happy? Should my heart not be warmed?

The Hole

Apple has a whole hole in the Mac product line. I’m less concerned about a $399 Mac clone, nothing more than a cheapie PC which will become a heavier brick with each OS X update.

Between the iMac and the MacPro exists customers with desires, love, needs, ambition, and money. Yet Apple ignores our pleas for justice, mercy, and high credit card limits.

How hard can it be to plug that hole with a Mac mini tower, a couple of internal hard drives, room for a few cards and plenty of RAM? The MacPro has room for 32 gigabytes of RAM. I’d settle for 8, far more than a lowly iMac.

Apple, hear my plea!