Regarding the early systems that I profiled: First of all, each of these other systems were distinct from the original Apple II primarily because they were targeted at a lower price point than the Apple II. The Apple II with 4K sold for nearly $1300; that is about twice the cost of the two competitors that were released the same year (the TRS-80 and the PET). The same applies to the systems released over the next five years as I outlined above; they sold for a low of $299 (VIC-20) and a high of $999 (Atari 800). This was a disadvantage to those who wanted an Apple, but may have legitimized it as a more serious computer.
The Apple II was Apple’s first mainstream computer. It was relatively-capable compared to contemporary computers, but it wasn’t very cheap.
kagis
https://www.apple2history.org/2010/10/25/the-competition-part-2/
$1,300 would be $6,747.56 in 2024 dollars.
The Lisa was considerably more expensive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K
The Mac 128k (the first Mac model) wasn’t too cheap either:
Yeah Apple was never cheap. Does more is debatable, but it had an advantage in non business software in early 80s