iFixit Late 2013 Mac Pro Teardown

Well the memory is standard.
Not so sure about the SSD but I'm sure OWC and possibly Crucial will have something eventually. The connector doesn't look like it's an M2 connector (possibly a direct PCIe connector) but the board looks like it could be a standard length (as discussed here).
Logic boards in Apple products have always attracted a rather steep price and and I suspect that the GPU packages will fall into the same category (leaving aside the cost of the actual GPUs which appear to be variations of the FirePro W7000, W8000 and W9000).
Interestingly the CPU itself actually appears to be a standard socketed Xeon so in theory it could be replaced (although whether OS X throws a wobbly if you do so is a slightly different question I guess).

It makes a change for everything not to actually be glued down these days. Whether that remains the situation is anyones guess now Jobs is out of the picture.

I'm continually amused by the notion that being able to rebuild a Mac Pro is a really important thing, given the evident fact hardly anybody actually ever does so. It's a small segment of Apple's smallest market, yet some people seem to think they should care.

Fair point I guess and one that probably also applies almost equally to other Workstation class PC's as well. PC's at every level are increasingly comoditised.
I doubt (outside the bounds of this forum anyway) that the majority of users ever crack open their computers case let a lone replace/upgrade any of the internal gubbins however much cheaper or beneficial it would be to do so.

Sales figures seem to suggest people are gravitating towards laptops and away from desktop PCs. Laptops have pretty much always been the least upgradeable sort of PC. That alone suggests making a PC that you can swap the bits in is if anything going to become an increasingly niche product.

With workstation PCs, I suspect it depends on the accounting of it. If as a business you're writing off the PC as an asset over 3 years, there's probably much less incentive to upgrade rather than replace. if you're stretching the asset lifetime to say 5 years, there's maybe more.

The Mac Pro does seem to be fairly upgradable in a mechanical sense - the pieces aren't soldered on or anything. It's a question of whether there's going to be enough market to produce GPU's and storage in the custom packages they've used to get the size down so much. I suppose if there's enough of a demand for it, somebody will supply that demand. if there isn't...

What has tended to happen before is when Apple has 'bumped' the Mac Pro it's offered any new components as upgrades at a premium to existing owners. That may turn out to be the only supplier of (for example) new GPUs you get, assuming Apple keep this form factor over several generations.

That might make the mac pro a more viable long term option if they can do that. If you know that you can replace parts then it becomes much less of a risk.

I saw a graphic the other day of desktop, laptop and tablet sales starting about 25 years ago. Desktops have been in decline for about 10 years.

However, laptops are now starting to decline in favour of tablets.

Yes but another factor is do people already have a computer or laptop? For most people who do a bit of browsing an older laptop can be more than enough so there is no real reason to upgrade unless it fails to work. A tablet can be another way to access the same information more conveniently for many. Mine is on my desk between my iMacs. I will watch TV on it while browsing on the iMacs. I prefer it this way because of the increased security I have with my desktop machines.

Also with the numbers who have access to a work computer they can do many things on that without the need for them to repeat the set up at home, so could cope with a laptop at home. The PC market has been saturated for many years, and I wonder how many are working solely on tablets? Most people will have a desktop or laptop before they get a tablet.

Initial benchmarking

By the looks of things, it's very much a tuned system for media/science apps. Very good at certain things, not particularly impressive at others. You definitely wouldn't buy it as a gaming rig, even running windows on it.

So, in other words, they've built a machine for the markets that use them. Those clever, clever bastards...

Their mistake. It's patently obvious everything should be designed to cater for the needs of People On The Internet.

When IGN review it, they'll rue their mistake.

By making it for specific markets it will give it a good solid market, even if that market is relatively small. If they make a profit on each that is all that matters.

Delivery dates for Mac Pro outside US slip into March

For a very expensive computer that was available 'to buy' in December. Not very good at all.