I've always been an advocate for Apple's business model of charging premium prices for premium products, and not going down the rabbit hole of trying to sell cheap enough so everyone can afford to buy one. The PC market was terrible for a long time with everyone chasing the absolute lowest price, cutting corners all over the place as they went.
But in the last few years, it's really changed. Other companies like Microsoft copied the idea, selling more upscale gear that really competes with Apple's products (except for the fact it still runs Windows and not OS X!). But more importantly - I think Apple lost their way a bit. They've been selling some of the highest priced systems they've had in the last decade, but loaded with compromises and flashy things that are far from proven worthwhile features to pay extra for.
For starters? There's NO reason that all Macbook Airs sold today shouldn't come standard with 512GB of SSD storage. The prices on SSDs have dropped sharply, to the point where on the PC/Windows side, I can buy even top-tier 512GB SSDs for under $240 or so, any day of the week. Even people who say "I won't ever need that much storage." are foolish for thinking that way when buying a new laptop that's going to cost them upwards of $1,000. Our employer, for example, purchased the corporate version of DropBox - and people are always sharing folders of content related to various projects. If you use a Macbook Air in our office, you have to constantly deselect things with "selective sync" in the DropBox app to prevent it from filling your drive up if you have a 256GB SSD.
All of the dongles for the current lineup of Mac notebooks is ridiculous too. They should include a set with each machine for what they cost, period.