Re: Typical el Reg
"Assuming their pockets were deep enough." and other such comments.
It's largely irrelevant. All machines at the time were very expensive when compared with modern ones. And, if IBM had had its way, the PCs would have stayed that expensive before being replaced by equally expensive PS/2 based machines.
Apple obviously got the mix right enough to get a large enough customer base that it was worthwhile for third parties to develop software for it and customers who found sufficient value (having a GUI was enough for some) in the ecosystem to pay for it. It took years for the PC world to come up with anything remotely as good, all while the clones and Intel were producing increasingly beefy beige boxes for WordStar and Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, etc.
The comparisons aren't like for like, either. An XT even with 640 KB was an 8086 and ran like a dog. The 68000 was a much more modern chip design and could get more done with less. Owning all the hardware meant that the OS could be stuck in ROM because it didn't have to worry about different drivers, etc. And people only needed to run one application at a time. I'd argue that's still largely the case*.
But, and, you knew there'd be a but, over time the PC hardware got better and better and even with the limitations of the ISA bus, was better pound for pound than the Mac. And Microsoft evenutally came up with a GUI that wasn't completely awful, though some of the awfulness had to do with fending off legal challenges from Apple over a GUI design that it hadn't developed itself.
Apple's take it or leave it approach suits some people really well and for many the price isn't that relevant: they buy in it in the expectation that "it just works" and they're usually right, which is why Apple has sold so many devices. However, to say price doesn't matter at all is to miss an important point: functional equivalence. Apple ruled the GUI roost until Windows 95 got serious traction. At which point, for many, which the choice of which GUI to run Word in mattered less. It's the same now with phones. And to be honest, Apple only have themselves to blame. They come up with good ideas, implement them brilliantly, try and ringfence everything with lawyers and seem to fall asleep while the rest of the world doesn't. It is now hard to make solid case for a premium Apple phone over the one people already have or a well-thought out mid-range Android. Like many companies, Apple does its best work when it is in a competitive market.
* I've had MacBooks since 2006. In the first one I had I had to replace the CPU fan twice because it was a shitty plastic one. Fortunately, we have a local store that knows how to handle Apple hardware. The list of bugs in MacOS that have not been properly fixed within a release cycle is also distressingly long.