Just wanted to weigh in as very disappointed. All they could have done, and we get what amounts to a speed bump. And for the price, it just seems outlandish. I know the margins are thinner for workstations, but geez. Cleve thinks workstations are going the way of the dodo, but I use one every day and a laptop isn't going to cut it. I just hope we get a refresh on displays (with built-in iSight, please) and a lower price tag.

Ditto on the display.

But now it makes room during the keynote for much anticipated MMMM! Now that would be great. One can wish...

As expected....

Well, this is about inline with what most people expected. What most people wanted didn't happen. (eSATA, Blu-Ray, etc)

Graphics card upgrade is bleh, no surprise there. You would think that Apple would go Bleeding edge on graphics, knowing we probably won't see a refresh on the MacPro tower for about a year. By the time the next refresh happens the graphics card would be dated. The cards in it now, they will be dated in 3 months.

What a disappointment!

There is still hope for Blu-ray, they could be holding the Blu-ray for a splash announcement on the iMac. With Warner Brothers dropping HD-DVD, it has become a lot safer to physically commit to Blu-ray rather than just the lipservice Apple's given so far.

As mentioned in the other comments, poorman's eSATA is already available. SATA is speced to a max. of 1m length, which is good enough to get out the back through a $20 part and to a HDD enclosure right next to the machine. Actual SATA implementations usually work solid out to the 2m max of eSATA. Plus Apple still loves it Firewire.

I'm happy that this machine does not come with a BluRay device.  As a pro, I'd rather pick and choose my own devices, instead of Apple specifying them for me.  Right now, its rare for me to distribute content on BluRay - I'd rather buy independently and upgrade my drives on my schedule.

Same thing with storage - I use an array, so I simply don't need eSATA.  I guess for the small home user, eSATA could be a low-cost alternative, but those with substantial raw video storage needs, an external fiber-attached RAIDed array is really the only production-quality option.

Finally, the CPU configuration is basically the best available.  I really don't expect a faster single-box encoding station than this one.

So, adding all that up, this model is just right for me.  But I can see how it would be a disappointment to the user that wants a bit of additional inexpensive, non-redundant storage.  Then again, there are a lot of alternatives for them, and firewire is a great option in terms of machine interoperability.

interesting though is this leaves a gap in their price linup with the price jump of the standard config.  I doubt a portable mac is desitined to fit this gap, but maybe, just maybe some other form of a mac?