I was incredibly disappointed by the Mini. I was looking for an updated, current-spec $500 or maybe $550 way to replace my 2012 Mini and let me stay in the Mac ecosystem. The old machines were supposed to be affordable ways to have a Mac. That's gone now. Most people's incomes have not risen 60% over the last 6 years to match these price increases. In fact, the middle class in the USA has probably seen real income go up only, what, 5% or something? Going up to $800 is an awful leap, at least to people who saw the Mini as I did -- and on top of that you'd have to get external storage to compensate for this ridiculous 120GB storage. So I don't think I will be replacing my old Mini with a new one, after all, which is a massive disappointment. Nor do I think I will be replacing my $600 iPad Pro with a $1000 one -- something else I'd been excited for. It's sad times. And of course the new MBA is so expensive, too. I've got a longstanding connection to the Mac platform dating back to the 80s and I'm pretty sad to have to leave it. My income level is just not what Apple is targeting anymore. It's pretty amazing to me that these tech journalists don't get what has happened here with these prices.
Well, the 2012 i7 Mini wasn't 499 either. What model do you have?
I got the base 2012 i7 with 4GB and a 1TB hard disk for about 700 (in 2014, half a year before the 2014 models appeared) from an online-auction site here (shrink-wrapped but from a private seller), then I spent another 700-something on 512GB SSD and 16 GB RAM. I think the list-price would have been something around 1300 or so for that, 1600 for the 2014 model, IIRC. All local currency, but with tax (but exchange rate is currently almost 1:1).
Personally, I cannot understand comments like yours. It's been obvious for years that prices are never going to go down in Apple-land. Apple only cares for the top-end of the market - because there's simply not enough money in the low-end to maintain their level of quality and service (and their profit-margins).
A 2018-i7 with 16GB and 512GB SSD is about 2k in local currency. That's 33.33 per month over five years.
Excluding the display(s).
Unless my 2012 Mini breaks, I'm likely not going to replace it soon. Maybe not even next year (I'm trying to maintain a six-year replacement cycle on hardware). Maybe I can get a used 2018 in 2020. Apple supports them long enough with OS updates and you usually get security-updates for the old OSs for a while, too. So, buying a used one in 2020 and using it for five or six years is actually realistic.
I just had a look and similar non-Apple systems aren't easily available. Most have a larger form-factor. The cheaper ones have less ports.
Lenovo has some nice systems. But then, it's Lenovo.
As for your observations on the US economy and household-incomes: to the best of my knowledge, this has been the case since the 80s of the last century. It was in part offset by women supplying additional household-income instead of staying at home. This trend is likely to continue if consumers like yourself continue to buy the cheapest stuff available and employers continuing to depress wages (because consumers buy something cheaper).
Though forgive me for pointing out that in a country where a majority still believes it's better not everybody has a health-insurance and a visit to the ER can bankrupt people, there are more pressing issues than a MacMini or an iPad that is a couple of hundred dollars to expensive.
