I've eaten €1500 meals at 3 star restaurants like L'Ambroisie and $10 Grand Slam meals at denny's. They fill different roles and both can be enjoyable.
For years there was a restaurant in Palo Alto that was really quite good and which my wife loved to visit. I was never happy because while the food and ambience were good, I always felt the bill was 50% higher than it should have been.
In the case of apps, most of them, for most users, don't justify the time put into them. Since that's true, people aren't idiots and won't take an up front risk on buying an app that doesn't work for them. That's why free download/in app purchase to really use has really taken off.
Oh, and it's well worth it to me to pay for a Mac. The fact that it's true for me doesn't justify your decision to buy a Mac or contradict your decision not to.
...supply and demand. That you were willing to eat there despite the higher prices suggests you found value in the food. You can bitch about higher prices all you want, but you paid them.
Likewise, for a lot of professionals the difference between a $3000 MacBook and a $1500 Windows notebook over the lifespan of 3-4 years is inconsequential. You could easily make up the difference by brewing your own coffee versus getting something at a store.
Yes, well the decision criterion was that it made my wife happy. So I suppose they optimized for that factor :-).