The Mac was priced too far out of the hobbyist snack bracket. And Steve Jobs deliberately sealed it off to be un-expandable and mostly unfriendly to tinkerers.
But in the early days, that opened up the niche for the Atari ST, the "Jackintosh", sold with the tagline "the power without the price". Dismissed these days but hugely important and influential in its time.
And that also paved the way for the Amiga.
But in the end, they tied their systems too closely to the low-end entry-level spec, which Apple did not do with the "sealed off" Mac. Which led to the Mac Plus, and the Mac II, and hundreds of models, still on sale today.
While the ST and Amiga struggled into the 68030 era then mostly died out.
So in fact, it's not really true, is it?
It's not about the price, because...
... in the end, they got reasonably priced...
... and still sell today, 40 years later...
... there's always the 2nd hand market...
... they had cheaper rivals but those companies died, showing that keeping your prices high enough for healthy profits is in fact the long-term winning strategy.
So: no. The MacBook Air is even more "sealed down."
It has been on sale, that locked down, for 16 years, and yet it still sells ten million a year.
So, well, I was an Atari ST user back in the day. So.
And yes the Mac dropped in price for a period in the late 80s, 90s, in the 030 era as you say. But this had a lot to do with dropping component prices and Apple's mass market strategy at that point. At that point in time my mother got a IIlc on educational discount and it was a far better deal than a PC of the same era, at least for what she was doing.
And in that era they made it a relatively open platform at that point, too, with an expansion bus, and ADB and all that.
But that was well beyond when Jobs was there. His original vision was a locked down appliance box. Though he changed his tune when he went over to NeXT.
The original Mac was too expensive for regular middle class people, and it had no expansion ports. I don't think you can deny those two facts.
The Apple II (4KB of RAM) was introduced at $1298 in 1977, equivalent to around $2225 in 1984 dollars. But it didn't include a display (though you could just use a TV) or a floppy drive - the Disk II was introduced in 1978 for $495, about $790 in 1984 dollars.
The Mac (128KB) was introduced in 1984 at $2495 - and it included a floppy drive, mouse, and integrated display.
