Can we say EXCESS?

[photo courtesy of store.apple.com]

Ok. I admit it freely. I am a computer geek, and an Apple geek as well. I like shiny things. So I was, of course, interested in what would be revealed during the WWDC. So now we have the Mac Pro, the successor to the PowerMac, and it looks just the same, except that they have managed to beef up the options on it. Yay, I thought, for those people who need a super-powerful computer. Now they can accommodate multiple hard drives and an insane amount of RAM. Here's the problem though...Just for fun, I went to the Apple website and thought I'd customize an extreme Mac Pro. Max out all of the options, see what the computer would look like. So the first option I had was upping the processors. That immediately added $800 to the computer's base price of $2400. Next was the RAM. I had already read elsewhere that the computer could support 16gb of RAM. Crazy. Unnecessary. What is more insane than that, however, is the cost! You can purchase that 16gb of RAM for the low low cost of $5700. No, that's not at all a typo. And that's just the beginning. There is room in this computer for 4 hard drives, and you can max them out at 500gb each, for a grand total of 2 TETRABYTES of hard drive space. $200 for the first 500gb drive, $400 each for each consecutive drive. Then change the graphics and video cards, upgrade to a 30" cinema display, and heck, add on a second one since the computer can support it. And then play with Bluetooth and Airport, upgrade the mouse and keyboard to their wireless counterparts, make your computer a server just for fun, choose your software options, might as well tack on some AppleCare...and before you know it, you have now configured a $17,000 computer!

Let's get serious here. That's a ridiculous amount of money. And a ridiculous range of options. who really needs TWO 30" cinema displays? Or 16gb of RAM, for goodness sake! Who in their right mind needs this extensive range of options? And who would really pay for it anyway?

I thought, at first, that I would be impressed with this computer. Now I'm just sort of disgusted. What on earth justifies this sort of excess and complete technological machismo?