On the new MacPro, we have to consider the target audience.
It's doubtful the machine is a good choice for anything other than an artist doing crazy sound/video stuff. It's simply too much compute power. Of course I'd love to have a 56-thread monster (I always wanted Intel to invest more seriously on Xeon Phi as a homogeneous CPU/GPU replacement because I got tired of the VAX+supercomputer arrangement from the 80's that survives today as the normal clever x86 driving stupid-but-can-lift-heavy-things GPU) but I simply can't justify one for me. When I actually need to do some heavy lifting, there is always Google or AWS to help me with it (and Azure can rent me some really big Cray iron if I really, really need that kind of power). I have a cousin who was into computational chemistry that has mastered programming the classic Cray boxes and even he would probably be very happy with ad-hoc swarms of cloud-based boxes these days.
The main advantage of the Mac Mini is the size, but if you match specs with an iMac Pro or even an iMac, you'll kind of end up with the same price for a machine without a monitor. It's cute, but I wouldn't get one. And the actual desk footprint of an iMac is more or less the same as a Mini with a monitor.
It'd be nice if Apple decided to sell the iMac LCD panels as standalone monitors (because I'd love to have a monitor with the same color responses as my iMac, just so that the background looks the same on all screens - or even the black background of the terminals were all the same shade of black, FFS). Maybe they will, but, again, considering all machines that can run macOS, all practical options in the low-to-mid-to-high-end (MacPros are waaay above that) have pretty nice free screens attached to the machine.
One minor complaint: the stand... Asking $999 for a monitor stand is beyond ridiculous. If it costs that much to make, then just sell the ultra-HDR 8K wundermonitor for $999 more and put the stand in the box. It's not like it's not much cheaper than the reference monitors it goes against. I'd totally get one without a Mac if I had to edit 8K video for money (lots of it). The stand is 2019's version of the "I'm rich" iPhone app.
All in all, we should think of the Pro as the SGI Tezro of our time - exotic, expensive, ugly (it really looks like a cheese grater) and probably more than we need.
It's doubtful the machine is a good choice for anything other than an artist doing crazy sound/video stuff. It's simply too much compute power. Of course I'd love to have a 56-thread monster (I always wanted Intel to invest more seriously on Xeon Phi as a homogeneous CPU/GPU replacement because I got tired of the VAX+supercomputer arrangement from the 80's that survives today as the normal clever x86 driving stupid-but-can-lift-heavy-things GPU) but I simply can't justify one for me. When I actually need to do some heavy lifting, there is always Google or AWS to help me with it (and Azure can rent me some really big Cray iron if I really, really need that kind of power). I have a cousin who was into computational chemistry that has mastered programming the classic Cray boxes and even he would probably be very happy with ad-hoc swarms of cloud-based boxes these days.
The main advantage of the Mac Mini is the size, but if you match specs with an iMac Pro or even an iMac, you'll kind of end up with the same price for a machine without a monitor. It's cute, but I wouldn't get one. And the actual desk footprint of an iMac is more or less the same as a Mini with a monitor.
It'd be nice if Apple decided to sell the iMac LCD panels as standalone monitors (because I'd love to have a monitor with the same color responses as my iMac, just so that the background looks the same on all screens - or even the black background of the terminals were all the same shade of black, FFS). Maybe they will, but, again, considering all machines that can run macOS, all practical options in the low-to-mid-to-high-end (MacPros are waaay above that) have pretty nice free screens attached to the machine.
One minor complaint: the stand... Asking $999 for a monitor stand is beyond ridiculous. If it costs that much to make, then just sell the ultra-HDR 8K wundermonitor for $999 more and put the stand in the box. It's not like it's not much cheaper than the reference monitors it goes against. I'd totally get one without a Mac if I had to edit 8K video for money (lots of it). The stand is 2019's version of the "I'm rich" iPhone app.
All in all, we should think of the Pro as the SGI Tezro of our time - exotic, expensive, ugly (it really looks like a cheese grater) and probably more than we need.