It's pretty obvious that decision was made when this product was almost complete and this product was supposed to replace the entire Mac Pro line.
Obviously something changed their minds though.
Obviously something changed their minds though.
Imagine Cupertino had (nearly) finished designing this sleek machine, thought it was a wonderful answer to refresh their Mac Pro, then they get completely railed in January for failing to provide professionals a pro machine when they expected it. They're late, they know it, but no biggie - they'll introduce this pro machine this summer and everyone will love it.
The pros then proceed to articulate exactly what their grievances are, and the machine that is sitting under the black cloth in the back room looks nothing like what their most loyal users are hurting for. And if listened to closely, the machine that's mostly finished is actually an insult to their most valuable customers. What do you do in that case? Completely scrap the beautiful machine you've already made? Or eat (silent) crow and promise a completely new product that you start working on tomorrow, and tell the engineers who were working on their pet dream computer to quickly finish up - let it be introduced mid-keynote by a non-executive, go back and painfully re-etch a diminutive 'i' in on each of the just-printed 'Mac Pro' bezels - likely to never recoup their R&D costs on this 'lost' product.
That's a good point. I bet that's exactly what happened here. Because if Cook would have given this exact keynote, but had introduced this grey iMac as their 'next new thing' that was replacing the Mac Pro, he'd have been booed off his own stage during Apple's most sacred moment. Apple had enough sense to avoid that moment. They have enough cash to produce an entire (temporary) product line that loses money. They don't have enough cash to lose their most die-hard and influential customers en masse and hear a crowd of 'boos' at the height of their hallowed keynote.