Yesterday morning I had a nice conversation with an Apple PR rep. She had bad news for me, unfortunately. No, she wasn't breaking the news to me about Leopard in October. It was worse, in my opinion (don't get me wrong - the Leopard delay is disappointing, but you'll see what I mean in a minute).

Apple isn't providing evaluation units of the oh-so-powerful eight-core Mac Pro to the media. Not to me, or prominent columnists for nationally-published newspapers, or other worldly Mac publications. I was told that the eight-core Mac Pro is aimed at developers and other folks whose daily work requires such horsepower. It's not a general-consumer Mac, and our benchmarks don't reflect the needs of a developer. So there's no need for Apple to enter its top-flight Mac Pro into the evaluation process.

Got an eight-core Mac Pro? Can we borrow it?

I argued that while our readers may not necessarily have $5,000+ to plunk down on a Mac Pro, our readers still demand information that provides insight on what we could be seeing in the future. But that didn't fly with Apple. If we want to get a taste of the power of eight cores, we'll have to buy one.

(Yes, I know that at its base configuration, an eight-core Mac Pro is $3,997, which includes 1GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. Considering what you'd use eight cores for, you'd probably add more RAM and install at least a 1TB of storage, pushing the price towards $5,000.)

We're in a bit of a quandary. Apple isn't loaning out eight-core Mac Pros and we can't afford to buy one (we don't have the money in our budget for such an expense). Apple did leave a crack in the door, saying it's possible that we could get a loaner "down the road," but I'd to get my hands on one sooner than later. Perhaps a rental? Maybe, if I can find that rare retailer that stocks up-to-date Macs. Maybe some covert testing in an Apple Store? Probably not. I'm open to suggestions.

While I try to find a Mac Pro, check out Bare Feats' benchmarks of the eight-core Mac Pro (which they bought). The results won't knock your socks off, but they are interesting.