Like many (but not all) of Apple's premier offerings since then and today, it was cheap taking into consideration all the factors, and they sometimes capitalize

Like many (but not all) of Apple's premier offerings since then and today, it was cheap taking into consideration all the factors, and they sometimes capitalized this in their marketing. For all it offered out of the box, with the market penetration it had, the number of users/popularity it enjoyed, the ease-of-use in its class, and level of support delivered...it was "cheap" for certain values of that term that all placed a premium upon getting that entire combination of factors. There is no doubt it is expensive, but if you fit their target market, there was a fair probability you would get pretty enamored with the fit and find the budget. There are tradeoffs (some significant) to that approach, and Apple had and continues to possess a cultural tendency to be pretty purist about it for some products some of the time, but it has served them well so far (though I see eerily uncomfortable parallels of the ][ era to today's iPhone era).