Apple should stop selling four-year-old computers
The dearth of Macbook Pro releases may not represent an obstacle or even a nuisance for everyone but for devotees of the Mac such as myself whose work falls under the general rubric of "creative", it presents real challenges. The Mac issue is not necessarily speed (which could mean processor, bus, GPU etc) but isolation.  The platform is burdened by I/O options that are not mature or well supported. Things became really challenging when Apple bet on Thunderbolt, which from my non-techie perspective seems to have never gained great acceptance by peripheral makers. By stripping out Firewire and and providing somewhat limited USB 3.0 support Apple really narrowed the universe of mass storage and other peripherals that were viable.<p>Everything that formerly lived happily in the enclosure of a Mac Pro now had to live in a stack near a laptop or new Mac Pro cylinder. The more compact Mac Pro exacerbated workplace sprawl rather than helping it. Macbook Pro models faced the many of the same issues.<p>I have been nursing along an early 2009 Mac Pro, praying is does not have a major component failure because apple has left me as a photographer/videographer out in the cold. While I realize the Intel processor road map has created challenges for Apple, they need to get updated machines into the market or face defection from people like me who have been Mac Zealots since the mid-80's.