I hear you guys, I do. I love strong aesthetics, especially for pride of ownership and agree that this shouldn't look like I built it. But I still think you miss the point that this was supposed to be a larger version of the GEEK out that had a bit more power and ins and outs to accommodate desktop use. It was going to be relatively cheap and simple (you have seen the original design idea right?) and be perfect for entry level folks. That they gave us internal improvements to take it away from that original vision and have it compete with higher end gear is awesome, but I believe they are trying to keep it as simple to manufacture as possible to keep costs down (and I think they are right to do that). To buy something with as many features as the upgraded versions have AND to have a custom case, I think you are looking at $1500-2000 devices, and now you are in an entirely different market than original. Yes, for $700-1000 you want something that looks nice, but there are very few products on the market for that price that have the feature set and quality of components that the Pulse has.
I agree. This reminds me of Audio-GD stuff, which all "looks" cheap to me, but tend to have the internal components to back up the prices they are asking.