It wasn't just the price of the software - video ram was still expensive, the idea of wasting a whole bit on each pixel was still something you had to decide yo

It wasn't just the price of the software - video ram was still expensive, the idea of wasting a whole bit on each pixel was still something you had to decide you could afford, plus you needed to be able to afford hardware that was fast enough to make a GUI work fast enough to be usable The hardware behind the Mac arrived at prices where this was doable (at $2400 1984 $$ still really high), the Lisa bombed largely because of its much higher price