I am really curios how the so called "professional" users will react to not being allowed to upgrade the internals.

Well, they probably will find out they can, then they won't care.

You can upgrade the RAM, storage, and video cards. Yes they use proprietary connectors for the last two but third parties have offered upgrades for apple proprietary connectors before. It also means Apple could well offer GPU upgrades in the future.

Yet the Mac Pro is ...
a) Round

A shape chosen for better cooling characteristics - they can get away with a smaller case, and a smaller fan to cool the same components that a square case would use.

b) Shiny

This is the only one of the items that really has little practical use. Yet what case maker WANTS a butt-ugly case? And in a design shop it looks better to have better looking gear.

c) Cool looking

This is only because it's small, but small has utility too. It means it's much easier to move around, and modern workers change workspaces more frequently than they used to. Have you tried moving one of the older Mac Pros? They looked great too but you sure wanted to leave them where they were.

d) expensive

That's not even right. For what you get it's NOT expensive, which is the whole point of the Slashdot story to begin with. It gives you a lot of power at a fair price, and some people do in fact need that much power. Anyone who does not can just buy an iMac.

There are a few rich people that will buy one just for fun, sure. But most of the people buying this system will do so because they have a PRACTICAL need for the power the system offers in a smallish form factor.

when buying equivalent hardware

Even in the example that is "only" 11k instead of 10k from Apple, there were significant shortcomings in the hardware used compared to what Apple ships. It's not going to be equivalent - probably not even to the cheaper Mac Pro configurations that are just $3k-$5k.

You can replace the first two things via a PCIe card attached through Thunderbolt.

Why would you WANT to replace the fan which is perfectly tailored to the system and for noise levels?

But why would you replace the first two? It already has two GigE ports. You can get Thunderbolt to FiberChannel adaptors if that's what you were after. And it already supports a pretty modern WiFi stack, 802.11ac.

I thought that too (specced one out), but recently I found out they are in fact shipping to people already. The two months is just for new orders as they are in heavy demand...

It still may be possible to pick one up at an Apple store though.

And "forcing alternative energy" is the wrong way to look at it.

It's exactly the right way to look at it. Because that's what is happening, you are trying to throw money to artificially hurry up when solar becomes cost effective, which just doesn't work - you can only improve materials science so quickly before you are just wasting money.

also greater vulnerabilities as we just found out in Toronto with our huge ice storm outage.

Curious to hear how much power a solar panel outputs when it too is covered by inches of ice & snow.

In fact in that situation it's good 'ol gas, your car and a big-ass inverter that comes to the rescue - not solar.

There is no way that system is the same, or even close to the same as a Mac Pro. Either the storage is slower (very likely), the GPU is slower (very likely), or some other aspects are also not really the same (you say "similar" Xeon CPU).

The Mac Pro *does* have an upgradable GPU. It's proprietary but that doesn't mean Apple will not be offering an upgrade later, or that third parties may do so (they have with Apple's custom storage chip interface in the past).

It's great you can build a powerful and flexible system, but it does no-one any good to claim it is really comparable. And would it really be nearly as good as even the cheapest Mac Pro configuration?

AppleInsider had a similar article a few days ago.

Their conclusion was $14k, somewhat higher than the Slashdotted article... it would be interesting to see when it comes back up how the component choices differ from the real thing and AppleInsider's.

We already know you can replace the three major components people generally replace in systems - so it's not like you have to max out any of those three initially. Except for the fact Apple is generally charging you less than you'd have to pay on your own for that part right now...

1) Create Dogecoin miner client.

2) Get other people to install miner

3) Client also secretly finds Bitcoin wallets and sends them to me.

4) Profit? Yes profit!

This isn't entirely a bad thing. Higher energy costs spur investment in alternative energy sources and efficiency gains.

Which wouldn't be needed if you simply used nuclear power. Solar would improve anyway for other reasons. But in the meantime you wouldn't be wasting a lot of money better spent on forcing alternative energy on people before it's ready (or in the case of wind power, propping up a zombie until it dies once more as it does every few decades).

(as always subject to revision with new information)

Shouldn't that be "As Never"? Because you never, ever change your CONCLUSION. You just change measured data until it fits the CONCLUSION you know is true.

That's not science man. Even a guy who builds Vacuums understands this far better than you.

Since the strongest part of my argument is based in how real science works, and you couldn't even cough up that much - well I think I have no need of further information.

You are the one injecting all sorts of other political concepts, to distract from the utter failure of your cult.

Only one of those two attitudes is of any use to the rest of us.

Actually, they are both useful.

But far more useful is the person who points out that sometimes scientists are not really scientists, so that we ALL be be skeptical of scientific claims and not just believe it "because Science (bitch)".

Science is only a useful tool to humanity when it's facilitating a conversation as to what we want to do. When Science is holding a virtual gun to our heads and making unreasonable demands based on questionable data and theories not proved by experimentation, then it's far more a danger than a help.

what it does prove is the complete intellecutual bankruptcy of the deniers

You AGW cultists are a real trip. When you say there will be less sea ice before you say there will be more, it means that the scientists arguing against your beliefs are the ones in intellectual bankruptcy?

Have the stones to admit you don't actually understand what you thought you did. But then, a real cultist will die before undergoing change to deeply held beliefs...