But it doesn't solve my "need a new mac pro" problem.
Right now my 2009 octo mac pro, with six displays attached, plays three roles:
- it is my high end desktop workstation, with three primary high resolution (2560x1600) displays.
- it is my HTPC, with one of the six monitors strung into another room entirely.
- it is my office NAS, with four internal 3TB disks
So, three roles all rolled into one device. This is possible because I can expand it internally with 3.5" disks and pcie cards. In fact, my 3x gt120 cards only take up 3 of the 4 slots.
To duplicate this, I think I need to:
a) add an external disk enclosure
b) drive my fourth display via HDMI
c) pray that 3x 4k displays leaves can coexist with 2x 2560x1600 displays as secondary displays, which seems unlikely
d) pray that the disk array doesn't cannibalize enough thunderbolt bandwidth to interfere with the displays
e) another external box for cd ripping and general optical disk usage
... and all the while, with a single physical CPU, and no ability to ever upgrade the graphics cards. Granted, my needs must not be complicated if I can live with gt120s in 2013, but it was nice to know I could upgrade.
Oh, and I have upgraded my SSD boot device three times in the 4.5 years I've owned this system. That was nice.
So again, I actually really like this device - I think it is a very, very cool computer. But as a discriminating mac pro user who pushed the form factor to the limits, it is not at all what I need.