Welcome to the post of the minority opinionator, where your opinion matters. Unless it agrees with that of the majority. Then you are obviously being coopted and brainwashed. Only those who hold minority opinions can possibly have logic on their side. No, this isn't sore-loser whining: it's principle! Anyone who agrees with the majority obviously has no principles, since the only explanation for this common opinioin is that the holders of it are afraid of the majority. I am unafraid therefore I am right. Your Mileage Must Vary.

Um ... no. Not unless you're comparing high end 10 years ago to low end today. A starter name-brand desktop system complete with monitor and keyboard in the mid-'90s would generally hover just below $2000 and sometimes break above it: this was true for both Mac and PC. Nowadays they tend to hover just above $1000, sometimes breaking into the $1500 range. A significant change, but not nearly as radical as you suggest. The last time I can remember hearing about typical 'average' (non-pro) Mac users spending $4000 on their systems was in 1984. From there until the 1990 it was more like $3000 as an upper range. After 1990 (but still well before the clone era) prices precipitously dropped to around to $2000 level for starter systems. And after 2000 they have been dipping toward that magic $1000 mark and sometimes with the odd product even hitting it, like with the eMac and the very lowest end iMacs. (The Mac mini crossed it like many bargain basement PC vendors, but that also depends on what you do for a monitor and a keyboard.) Things changed much more before the Mac cloning era than they have since.