I agree with the premise that there is alot of changes that have to be made as you move along and iterate, but if you have a skill you can bill at a higher rate than you can hire a programmer at, then you can totally iterate. I have development skills, but also run a consultancy where I can net higher hourly rates than it costs me to hire top tier developers. So alot of times is more expedient to hire them and focus on running my consulting business. There are multiple paths, but I have seen with some of my clients they need to have deeper pockets or ongoing revenue from which to iterate out of.
It will be interesting to see if they found a way to deal with the reported heat issues related to ivy-bridge. Supposedly it was related to cheap thermal paste. If that is the case this is going to be a really sweet machine.