The entry-level Mac Mini, once a capable and generously-priced machine to introduce people to the Apple ecosystem, is now a painfully sluggish, soldered, non-upgradable doorstop. You buy an iMac with a Retina display, and get a 5400RPM drive. As if to add insult to injury, you can't even use the new ones in Target Display Mode -- god forbid, as some people may buy the entry-level one so they can have a cheap 4K/5K monitor, rather than having to pay extra for something that performs vaguely acceptably for the price.
I would love for Tim Cook to work some poor Apple advisor's job for a week, and has to explain to somebody why their 2K machine from a self-congratulating, commited-to-quality company, is so darn sluggish. "Well, you paid a lot -- but you didn't pay enough."
It just makes me mad. How much money do you need before it's enough, and you start giving people a little value for their purchase?
Totally agree. There's this pretentiousness or arrogance that's becoming more and more visible with Apple. They've always had a little bit of arrogance, they always pretended that everyone has the money to buy only Apple branded stuff. But if you did buy their stuff, at least you were "in the club". You were guaranteed something incredible and worth it in its own right. Even the iPod Shuffle was a great product on its own, and it worked well, it didn't make you wish you got something better.
Nowadays, it's like this: You pay loads for an Apple product, but could only afford the low-end version. Turns out the low-end version is a dud, it looks like an Apple product from far away, but you would have been better off with just some other cheap product from another manufacturer. 16 GB entry iPhone, (arrogantly no intermediate 32 GB version to justify the high price of the 64 GB version), crappy entry Mac Mini, crappy entry level iMac, removal of features like Target Display as you say, etc... Now, to be "in the club" (by that I mean: to feel like you got care and respect in exchange for your money), you need to carefully choose one of the more expensive products. Also the lack of care for anyone with an iPhone that's older than 2 years: oh, you can upgrade to the new iOS, which will slow down your phone and make it unusable, or you can keep your iOS version but features you rely on will just stop working (like syncing with iCloud).
Apple is the rich kid who's never even considered that not everyone is as rich. "Oh, but you're not
supposed to buy the entry level device, that's just so we can say "Starting from $99". Oh we didn't know that $200 for an adapter would be a problem for you, how odd! Oh, too bad you can't keep buying a new iPhone every year, maybe if we make it look like it's made of gold you'll buy it? How about bigger emojis? Oh you mean you want it to be
cheaper? Nooo you see we can't do that... But look, it's
bigger! And the price is also bigger, but I mean so is the phone, it makes sense."
