It looks to me like Apple overcharges on brand new product classes when they first come out to cover the R&D used to create them, then they integrate it into the lesser priced product lines once the early adopters essentially paid for the manufacturing facilities to make these products cheaper at a higher scale. So Apple still ends up making over twice as much on these products once they are being made at much higher amounts. They did this with the first Macbook pro, which was just a CPU change but paid for the unibody manufacturing plants for future models.
It does not surprise me that a technology only available at top prices eventually gets integrated in the whole line. Except the lowest end, they get updated when the rest of the industry is just creating better components. For example the CRT iMac. Apple switched to LCD when it was clear the rest of the industry moved on from CRT's and used kept using plastic on the low end until they were able to produce unibody metal cases at lower prices than plastic ones. And put glass on them so it would lower the price of glass for their phones.
But with all these new products it will come out with in 2022. The price is going up across the board. So what are R&D are we gonna be paying for now? VR? I hope its VR.
