I hear you, but I finally said enough is enough and have delayed purchasing another Mac, possibly permanently. Never say never, but at this point instead of a mini or iMac, I am going to use my self-built PC, and if I need another laptop will likely look at something outside of the Mac world. Unless there are drastic changes, I can no longer justify paying a growing premium for what is now at best a comparable and at worst inferior product.
This is true for me in regards to all of the Apple offerings. In the past I did not give more than a passing glance to alternatives. Going forward Apple will have to compete with the alternatives for me, and if they do not justify their cost, I am prepared to start going with the alternatives.
Good for you I grabbed a dell optiplex for veterans day sale .
It was on their outlet business store.
3 year warranty
i7 8700t 6 cores with threads a bit slower then apple six core i7 8700 b but uses 35 watts
a toshiba nvme m.2 256gb ss that unlike apples is removable
since it uses the t model lower power i7 room for a sata drive I added a 512 gb intel ssd
1 stick of 16gb ram speed 2400
I added 1 stick of 16gb ram speed 2133
so I have 32 gb ram at 2133.
the gear on the sale with rebates etc was 603 - 36 = 567
add the ssd for 83 I went to 650
I had the ram laying around so the ram upgrade was free.
I am not saying apple should sell the six core for 603.
but they could have sold a 128gb ssd that is replaceable
and the i7 six core could have been
i7 8770t
8gb upgrade able
128gb ssd upgrade able
price 999
I won't go into the fact the dell is a pleasure to work on.
I will not be buying the new mini.
I may sell one my one 2014 with 4 gb base model
I may buy a 2014 with 8gb and iris 5100 gpu
this would be about a 200 dollar cost to do