> I can't see Jobs trying to sell a >$10k BTO Mac as anything other than a very special edition with a whole marketing circus supporting it

Remember Next or the Lisa or the original Mac? Jobs was pretty good at trying to sell very expensive computers. The original Mac was priced equivalent to $5,877 in today's dollars. The Lisa was priced equivalent to $24,600 of today's dollars.. and we all know how expensive Next was.

That was a huge problem of his that he fixed the second go-around (mostly - the Cube was beautifully expensive and would fracture). But from like 2000 to 2013 or so Apple would put out stuff that was a little more expensive than the competition but usually had enough features and quality to make it easily worth it.

Now they're selling $1,000 phones, gold watches, and machines that are way overpriced for what they offer. It's a noticeable shift.

A thousand dollar phone is only a few hundred more than the old phones, and is incredibly affordable. I’m still struck dumb by people bent out of shape about its price, when they are paying far more for their phone service.

I’m going to sell mine for $400 in two years, having cost me $25 a month in total For something i use a hundred times a day and take all my family photos with. I could have saved $10 a month by getting an iphone 8, big deal.

> gold watches

This is no longer the case - the most expensive Apple Watch has a ceramic case.

You may disagree with the components they chose for the iMac Pro, but they certainly aren’t profiteering off it. You can’t build an ugly box with the same parts for more than 10% less.

I don't know about an event. I think people will just stop buying Apple because of all the frustration with their products. I think it'll be subtle and one day we'll just all realize that, "hey, Apple used to be worth $900 Billion, now it's worth half that."