Yeah I'm pretty sure it's all solely profit motivated.
Under Tim Cook, Apple followed the religion of the minimum profit margin very carefully. They just don't sell stuff that they can't extract 50% margin of.
With that in mind it's clear that a hypothetical big iMac would be priced at around 2.2K at least for the very entry level at that would be a ridiculously weak computer for at that price point.
The minimum viable machine would be around the 3K mark and a comfortable setup would be bordering on 4k. Those kinds of price would make it an extremely niche product but would also clearly highlight the major inflation Apple products have suffered under Tim Cook.
The iMac was good because it was reasonably priced, for this reason they sold a lot of them (I know that for a fact, I worked for an Apple Premium Service Provider) but the margin on those was not as good as the rest, in part because of the display but also other factors (transport, servicing).
And thus, their "solution" is to offer a standalone display that costs the same as previously an entry level "big iMac", this way they ensure their profit margin on 2 front and encourage you to renew the mac part more often.
In my opinion that last part is a bit nonsensical, I find that by the time you want to renew the computer (as a private owner, not a business), display tech has evolved enough that you would want to change it anyway. Because the big iMac had a useful supported life of almost 10 years and you can still use them and they still make decent Windows/Linux computers if you don't want to deal with Apple unsupported OS (becomes problematic after 3-4 releases).
Everything Apple does nowadays is about profit first, and almost only profits. I wish they never had been that successful with the iPhone. I bought the first gen (imported from US), as well as first gen iPod and they were really great defining products. I did not expect the whole populace to pick up on it and make it a social status thing.
It has tainted everything and now they make too much money to care about anything really. They still make good products but when you look at pricing/competition it is really not as appealing as it used to.
Under Tim Cook, Apple followed the religion of the minimum profit margin very carefully. They just don't sell stuff that they can't extract 50% margin of.
With that in mind it's clear that a hypothetical big iMac would be priced at around 2.2K at least for the very entry level at that would be a ridiculously weak computer for at that price point. The minimum viable machine would be around the 3K mark and a comfortable setup would be bordering on 4k. Those kinds of price would make it an extremely niche product but would also clearly highlight the major inflation Apple products have suffered under Tim Cook.
The iMac was good because it was reasonably priced, for this reason they sold a lot of them (I know that for a fact, I worked for an Apple Premium Service Provider) but the margin on those was not as good as the rest, in part because of the display but also other factors (transport, servicing).
And thus, their "solution" is to offer a standalone display that costs the same as previously an entry level "big iMac", this way they ensure their profit margin on 2 front and encourage you to renew the mac part more often.
In my opinion that last part is a bit nonsensical, I find that by the time you want to renew the computer (as a private owner, not a business), display tech has evolved enough that you would want to change it anyway. Because the big iMac had a useful supported life of almost 10 years and you can still use them and they still make decent Windows/Linux computers if you don't want to deal with Apple unsupported OS (becomes problematic after 3-4 releases).
Everything Apple does nowadays is about profit first, and almost only profits. I wish they never had been that successful with the iPhone. I bought the first gen (imported from US), as well as first gen iPod and they were really great defining products. I did not expect the whole populace to pick up on it and make it a social status thing. It has tainted everything and now they make too much money to care about anything really. They still make good products but when you look at pricing/competition it is really not as appealing as it used to.