I'm still of the view that the 7,1 is in the same position as the Power Mac G5 (even the 2003 version, let alone the 2005), as it is…
(i) The last and best of its line
(i) [and/or] An overpriced white elephant
(iii) Exactly what Apple needed to do for its customers with the technology available at the time
(iv) Should be bought on the understanding that its value for money and potential useful life are dependent on what you can do with it now, and with reasonable expense in the short to medium term, not on upgrades that might be impossible or unfeasibly expensive.
(v) [Fingers crossed on this one] Not the last machine to use this case design…
Max Yuryev makes some good points in both that video, and the one where he said he was switching from his 7,1 to the M1 Mini. No ifs buts or maybes, Apple should have resolved the driver issues and released more, and cheaper, GPU updates (whether the 6000 series will be an option remains unclear, when it should be available already). However, his wounds are mostly self-inflicted. The ARM rumours were already sounding likely to prove accurate even by WWDC 2019. The 7,1 was going to be it for an Intel Mac, and Apple's incentives to update it were not going to be that strong. If Max hasn't got his money's worth out of the machine already, and isn't prepared to accept the limitations of the machine to handle the increased and altered workload he's decided to put on it, that's on him. Oh, and he wants to sell it now 'before values drop'. Hasn't worked that one out, has he? The YT comments on these videos are the usual echo-chamber rubbish with people reinforcing their own prejudices.
Apple had to release what they did, when they did. PCIe 4.0 still isn't a (shipping) possibility on any Xeon. That, and the socket change, is down to Intel alone. Apple couldn't have just kept the 6,1 on sale for another three or four years (well, it could, but…). And, assuming Apple Silicon was already agreed if not in R&D, then a switch to AMD would have been very short-term, and very awkward. Just not a sensible option. So, 7,1 has been both a massive, very worthwhile upgrade, and a disappointing dead end.
Given that Apple does, despite what some insist, care about customers being satisfied, and is also the kind of company that prices components to multiple decimal points (they're still using the same power supply in the M1 mini as the Intel models, despite the massive reduction in power consumption), I think that the eight-slot big-box form factor will be staying on for AS, just as the 1,1 used the G5 case. The Pro, like the mini, is a (very) low-volume seller. Apple is more likely to leave the case alone rather than upset all the buyers who appreciate and use some or all of that extra expansion, the rack mount version, the clever design touches, not to mention have the cost of retooling. A smaller option would be a very sensible, logical progression, if they can somehow make it neither a fundamentally flawed system like the 6,1 and the Cube, nor end up making the big tower, and the rack version, even lower selling & at risk of being cancelled altogether and making 2013's errors look like sensible planning. Whether, or even if, the gaping hole in the current desktop lineup gets filled by an M1X Mini (and there will, most likely be one to replace the i5 & i7 models), an iMac Pro (whether or not it's actually called Pro), the rumoured smaller Pro, or all of the above, remains to be seen. But the 8,1 will not have a processor that's the equivalent of four or five M1s stuck together with unexpandable UMA memory, no discrete GPUs, no PCIe slots and an awful lot of empty space. That's about as likely as when certain commentators seized on the word 'modular' in the 2017 apologetic press briefing that preannounced the 7,1 and iMac Pro, put two and two together to make 27.34, and decided the 7,1 would be a set of stackable boxes. But, as this is Apple, we'll only know when we know…
