Well at least that is the theory. They are losing sales from people who could reason around compromising performance (speed mostly) but making the effort to get

Well at least that is the theory. They are losing sales from people who could reason around compromising performance (speed mostly) but making the effort to get a "better" made computer with a system they like, but absolutely cannot work around the low storage and ram that are just handicapping for many workloads. Someone who just runs graphic software (either adobe or affinity) with a few other things will get severely limited by 8GB. And it is not a "pro" use case, enough to spend so much money on a computer. So, they get a 1K laptop that has all those things standard and will forget about Apple... Add to that the unhappy ones about their experience with the base model and the long term is not looking good. My cousin routinely tells me he is so upset about the 1.8k he had to spend on a base iMac that is extremely limited and terribly slow for many things because Apple was stingy about the SSD (stupid fusion drive with exceptionally low amount of actual SSD). When he needed a computer for video production (the irony) to cover sports competitions he went with a PC and a cheap video card. Even though the Mac Mini would be a good fit for that I doubt he would even consider it. Right now, what makes him angry is that he has all the data and software on Apple land and the switching cost is tremendous (especially time he does not necessarily have). But when his iMac becomes obsolete, maybe he will try when he sees the base price and remember his unfortunate experience... Apple has loyal fans more than ever, but it is not rosy at all ; the experience of common people does not match what the geeks are saying...