I agree. With the first few iphones things and tech were DRASTICALLY changing. The first phone, to the 3g/3gs, to the 4 were drastic changes to the product. Then the 6/6+ which were highest selling of all time when they introduced a bigger device.
Of course price comes into effect when a phone costs $1000 and the average US
gross salary is $56k; after taxes that's like $3500 take-home and have to pay for increased housing costs, increased food cost, increased healthcare cost, (plus auto insurance, gas, utilities, etc). Meanwhile, wages are not rising. Regardless if its $50/month; which most people are already in debt or living paycheck to paycheck.
Apple's profits on newer devices are not in fact bigger than they have ever been. I keep seeing this thrown around because of the price tag, and "oh but Apple is so greedy that's why the price is ridiculous" but it doesn't make it any truer when looking at the facts.
This is in Australian money, but we're only concerned with the gray line and % profit for each device. And why they used an XS 256gb which bigger storage is a bigger margine than 64gb is unknown. So that last point is really lower using a 64gb.
But as you can see there have been MANY prior iPhone models (as they dont list every storage config) with higher profit margins and no one complained. The 6 and 7 series were more profitable per unit than the X or XS/Max series or any other iphone.
People just want to make excuses why they don't like the pricing, and Apple is the easy punching bag to simply say it's because they are greedy; instead of costs to research and build new tech is simply proportionally higher.
But the numbers dont support Apple is making any more margin per device on new phones versus old. If Apple was greedy the trend line would look very very different and a near 45 degree line from the iphone 5 up to XS.