My PowerMac G4 is nearly four years old now. It still does everything I need it do, and at a pretty good clip too. It can even hold it's own against the latest Intel powered Mac Mini, but as my photo and music libraries grow, the applications I use add more processor intensive features, it's starting to show it's age.

The introduction of the Mac Pro this week won't be changing that any time soon though. And for having four Xeon cores and as much else as it does, $2500 is a really good value. It's just too much for me.

This does leave a pretty big gap between the Mac Mini's lack of expansion and worse it's underpowered graphics chip built-in and the other extreme in the Mac Pro that offers more than I'd ever need.

I don't expect Apple to be releasing a Mac between the Mini and the Pro (at least not anytime soon) because it hasn't worked out well in the past (remember the G4 Cube?) and would likely just cannibalize sales of other macs.

Maybe once they've been on the market for a while and prices on the parts come down or there is a market share to be had, Apple will introduce a lower cost Mac Pro. Or maybe as newer models come out I can find one of these cheep.