It's what people asked for – a work horse, designed to be fast, reliable and reasonably quiet. They've tried the "beauty first" approach on the 2013 version and it was a disaster.
They can accomplish all that, just without the tasteless design.
The stainless steel frame contrasts with the shell, and not in a good way. The ventilation holes are really weirdly proportioned and still manage to look cramped with that inner baffle. And finally, that apple logo on the side stands out a bit too much, on the old cheesegrater it was a darker gray and a bit smaller.
The old G5 chassis was an understated and refined look, each of its elements seamlessly blended into each other well. This thing is just sharp to look at, my eyes do not know where to rest on it.
However, design is always about compromises. The G5 had more beautiful handles, but they had sharp edges and weren't nearly as ergonomical as the new ones. And I wouldn't be surprised if the weird holes in the new Mac Pro allow for twice the airflow. Both are tradeoffs that I, personally, welcome.
Yeah, I, too, am personally not a fan. It honestly looks like something the Empire from Star Wars would put together. I'm looking at my 'Two Towers' (named after the Lord of the Rings, not the disaster!) - a Quad G5 with a 256GB SSD/1TB HDD, and 16GB of RAM I use for my music production, and a 6-core MacPro5,1, with 32GB of RAM and 2 512GB SSD's I use for video editing.
They're just beautiful, and they already do more than I could ever need them to do, as a music label manager. I don't see myself replacing them.
