They are quite fond of profit share though. And the iPhone when it was around 50% of the market was making 90% of the profit. I doubt this is close to being true of the Mac.
Apple makes a $329 iPad. Theres really no reason they couldn't go after the PC market. The AppleTV is basically a headless iPad ad the 4K version is under $200. If Apple allowed it, it would probably be perfectly adequate as a desktop PC in any call centre, classroom, admin office or reception desk in the land.
Traditionally they haven't wanted to e in that range with the Mac. But now they can make money from services so there is more motivation to consider it. If you aren't in that space, someone else is in it for you, hoovering up your subscribers.
The Mac is not a big part of Apple's overall value these days. One hopes they might seek to address this.
Selling services will only get more important as time goes on.
Apple knows that it takes profits to finance whatever is coming next, whether it be software or hardware. They need to finance that because they don't use a lot of critical off the shelf stuff, and write and support their own operating systems and software, which is completely different from the worlds of Windows and Android. It brings added costs, but also allows for very deeply integrated hardware and software.
Apple could go after the PC market, if they wanted to. I don't believe they want to. They see the PC market for what it is; a race to the bottom using generic parts, with poor build quality, running a sorry excuse of an operating system (Windows 10, let's see if this month's patch Tuesday will make it 6 month's in a row with over 110 security issues fixed (if anything that Microsoft issues can be called a real "fix")). In addition, Apple knows that it is in a trusted position with users, something that can hardly be said of the Windows or Android world.
The iPad is a different case in that there are litterally no viable Android tablets out there. It can be put forward that the real competitor is a Chromebook, but that isn't a 100% accurate comparison either. What the iPad shows is that even in the absence of competition (again, with the possibility of the Chromebook) Apple will still continue to come out with newer and better products. They really do want to come out with the best products available, and price them properly, while continuing to profit at the level they want.
You make money from services by maximizing the number of subscribers. No matter how you want to look at it, the vast majority of subscribers will come from the iPhone, and the second group will be iPad users. The Mac will be a distant third. No matter how low in price the Mac is, it isn't going to come anywhere near the number of iPhone users. So, the idea is to keep the Mac high in quality, with great features, with excellent build quality, and price it accordingly. You aren't going to see Macs with poor build quality, cheap plastic cases, substandard displays, or loaded with crapware. If Apple were really concerned about maximizing service revenue, they would open their services up to Android, and to a lesser extent Windows. But they are NOT worried about attracting other platforms to their services (see the Windows and Android version of Messages, for example). Many people have said that Apple needs to open up their services to other platforms; maybe Apple wants to use services to get people to buy their hardware.
