Even if the Mac Pro is the computer of all our dreams, I doubt it will meet the poster’s needs. Seems like they want a fairly bare-bones, minimalist and simple computer. I doubt a Mac Pro is going to come in at under $3.5k at the entry level.
My current development machine is a Mac Pro, the little cylinder from 2013, and I had a couple of the aluminum box ones and my first was in a plastic case. I just couldn't see upgrading to a current Mac Pro ($5k to $13k). It's thin and looks cool, but I thought that I would want to use a different (wider) monitor and didn't think the cooling offered by the case was a good idea. Maybe the new Mac Pro that is supposed to be offered later this year will be just right.
As time goes on I find Mac loyalists more and more absurd
What purposes does your comment serve? It's not that hard to understand that he found the rest of the laptop valuable enough to spend 3.5k on it (despite the keyboard, which isn't that bad anyways).
His viewpoint isn't that uncommon either, plenty of businesses buy fully loaded MacBook Pros in bulk because it increases productivity. If you're using the laptop for work, you'll be connected to an external monitor and keyboard 90% of the time.
Apple specifically said in 2017 (before the release of the iMac Pro) that they messed up the 2013 Mac Pro, that they would make a new modular Mac Pro but it would take a long time to finish, and that the iMac Pro would be a stopgap.
It was a private press event, so the best source on this is probably Daring Fireball: https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives
Granted it was from some dude's homelab after he got laid off at Cray but still.
When you get up to that dollar amount I feel like there's just much sweeter shit out there.
One gripe is the thing is fucking massive and kinda unwieldy stuffed into a Coolermaster Cosmos II case...