I would be extraordinarily grateful for some insight into why this comment was downvoted.
Just looking at the first sentences:
GP: > I have zero issues with an Apple premium or paying a lot for hardware.
parent: > the hackintosh/enthusiast market [...] are the most price conscious segment
There's an enormous price gap between a Mac Mini and the Mac Pro (especially when the Mini now has higher single-threaded performance than the base Pro...) which Apple has widened in the last decade or two.
The 2013 mac pro was a mess. pass.
The latest mac pro... I think it wasn't just expensive, it was sort of sucker expensive.
It's the kind of Mac that makes you get an iMac to put on your desk and a beefy Linux server-grade box you hide somewhere, but that does all your heavy lifting.
I appreciate that the 2013 mac pro wasn't for you, but it was perfect for me: small but powerful. Firstly: RAM. I was able to install 64 GiB on it, which enabled me to run Cloud Foundry on ESXi on Virtual Workstation on macOS. Non-Xeon chipsets maxed-out at (IIRC) 16 GiB and then later 32 GiB—not enough.
Secondly, size & esthetics: it fits on my very small console table that I use as a desk. I have a modest apartment in San Francisco, and my living room is my office, and although I had a mini-tower in my living room, I didn't like the looks.
Third, expandability: I was able to upgrade the RAM to 64 GiB, the SSD to 1 TB. I was able to upgrade the monitor to 4k. It has 6 Thunderbolt connections.
My biggest surprise was how long it has lasted: I typically rollover my laptops every year or so, but this desktop? It's been able to do everything I've needed it to do for the last 7 years, so I continue to use it.
[edited for grammar]
Part of the "mess", I'd argue, was that Apple backed themselves into a thermal corner where they couldn't update the machine but also wouldn't cut its price so it got steadily worse value as time wore on.
This has long been an issue for Apple products. It's why the best time to buy an Apple product is right after an update.
... then I went to NewEgg and got 192GB of memory for $800ish, rather than Apple's exorbitant $3,000. And seriously, why? Same manufacturer, same specs. And convenience factor? It took a good 45 seconds to install the memory, and I'd wager anyone could do it (it's on the 'underside' of the motherboard, all by itself, and has a little chart on the memory cover to tell you exactly what slots to use based on how many modules you have).
And then I bought a 4x M.2 PCIe card and populated it with 2TB SSDs (that exceed the Apple, with sustained R/W of 4500MB/s according to Blackmagic) for just around $1,100, versus the $2,000 Apple wanted. Only downside is that it cannot be the boot drive (or maybe it can, but it can't be the _only_ drive).
Ideally the enhanced cooling from the Pro models would trickle down to the non-Pro. By all reports the (i)Mac Pro is virtually silent but in the low-power ARM world a desktop machine that size could almost be passively cooled, even under load.
I bet Apple would love to release an all-in-one iMac Pro powered by an iteration on the M1. They could put a Dolby Vision 8k display in it and drag race against Threadripper machines for UHD video workloads.
Outside of the Mac mini, the most powerful desktop machine was actually iMacs, with all the compromises that come with the form factor, and the trashcan Mac Pro who was thermally constrained.
In that period, no amount of money would have helped to get peak storage + network + graphic performance for instance.
We are now in a slightly better place where as you point out, throwing insane amounts of money towards Apple solves most of these issues. Except for those who don't want a T2 chip, or need an open bootloader.