You're also of course distorting the average sale price of Apple laptops, which is way under $2000.
Apple sells user privacy and products that work better and last twice as long as the competition. Everything else is secondary.
As an aside, you don't seem to have mastery of when the Jony Ive era began, at least not if you are referencing a post about the iPhone SE being the best.
not a chance. my original black macbook had the dvd drive replaced like 4 times before they replaced the whole computer, because it never worked in the first one. my 2011 macbook pro was never able to use bluetooth audio due to known and common bluetooth audio buffering problems, it struggled to age, even after upgrading to 16GB of ram where mac os x seemed to just say "thanks, i'll take all of that now", and eventually petered out as the trackpad diminished and the wireless card stopped working, rendering it useless as a laptop. my 3 year old ipad air has been having random reboot issues and recently just stopped turning on. apple will "repair" it for $300, which is around 50% of the original price. my brother, who buys nearly every iPhone and iPad version, has the same problem with his iPad air, and his iPhone 7s plus completely stopped working literally one day after the 1 year warranty ended. apple would do nothing. i don't own a single apple product that still works, and i take good care of my stuff. meanwhile, my lg phone and surface pro, which take way more abuse in that they actually leave the house, still work. i have never owned an apple product that just works, and i don't know anyone who has.
Before and after he stopped taking nearly all design cues from Braun and Dieter Ram's work.
The iconic designs were from before.
The Design Museum has a better background of his career. You should be able to spot a few more borrowed ones, and not just by Apple. https://designmuseum.org/designers/dieter-rams
Apple is now a fashion & lifestyle company. It sells the brand first and foremost. Every thing else is secondary.
As long as people keep buying MacBooks in absurd numbers, apple will keep going down this path.
Do these people need a $2000 MacBook to edit photos, consume media and work on office ? No. Do they still buy MacBooks ? Yes.
And there you have it.