Personally, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Apple was just keeping the Mac Pro alive long enough for third-party Thunderbolt accessories to catch on. Once you can plug in all the expansion you needed over Thunderbolt, what's the point of the Mac Pro? Just faster CPU and more RAM -- so maybe they'll release a special Mac Mini that's like a normal Mini but with Xeon processors and a ton of memory.
They have a "Mac mini server" today, and they've had an "Xserve cluster node" in the past, so it wouldn't be completely out of line for Apple to release a special version.
A lot of us wouldn't find it ideal, but it could be an answer to the "I need a Mac with 32GB of RAM" question, and Apple does seem to prefer all-in-one boxes that users plug their own external accessories into.
Personally, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Apple was just keeping the Mac Pro alive long enough for third-party Thunderbolt accessories to catch on. Once you can plug in all the expansion you needed over Thunderbolt, what's the point of the Mac Pro? Just faster CPU and more RAM -- so maybe they'll release a special Mac Mini that's like a normal Mini but with Xeon processors and a ton of memory.
They have a "Mac mini server" today, and they've had an "Xserve cluster node" in the past, so it wouldn't be completely out of line for Apple to release a special version.
A lot of us wouldn't find it ideal, but it could be an answer to the "I need a Mac with 32GB of RAM" question, and Apple does seem to prefer all-in-one boxes that users plug their own external accessories into.