Beachy, that was one of the most scathing, acrimonious, points of view I have read regarding Apple in a few paragraphs. I think you might want to consider therapy over your SE experience to get that behind you. :beige:
You make a claim here that is the first I have ever heard of it. "only months" after the Mac was introduced, the company was reeking record profits and selling more Macs than they could produce. As far as I know Apple did not consider being sold to another company until sometime in the mid 90s, when the company really started facing a decline thanks to poor management. What exactly is your source on that?
Also, blame Jobs all you want, but it was Jean Louis Gassee and to a lesser extent John Sculley who made that SE ridiculously priced. Gassee is responsible for suggesting they sell the keyboard separately. As for that, the Mac was riding high between 1987 and 1990, record profits for some of the most expensive equipment in the world all predicated on the fact that the Mac was better than anything else. And you know what? Depending on what you needed a computer for, it was. I walked out of a store in 1989 with the same result, not enough money to pay for the thing. Long story short I got over it and still think the Mac is the best value in the world. I have never had a friendly encounter with a Windows box and hopefully I have left those days behind me forever. But more to the point, the Macintosh sold like gangbusters for 6 months. You make some wild claims about how nobody could afford it, but the fact is, hundreds of thousands bought the Mac worldwide, enough to keep it puttering along despite sluggish sales until the 512K Mac came along and then the Plus. I personally bought a used 128K Mac which was one of the best investments I have ever made. It got me through a lot of years despite its limited RAM. As for the price, again you can blame Jobs, but Sculley is the real culprit there, raising the price higher than it needed to be. Also, part of Apple's problem during that period was poor management and not being able to deliver key accessories, like the 400K external drive and numeric keypad. And Apple priced the Mac XL within cannibalizing range of the 512K and it sold like hotcakes until somebody forgot to order parts. Early '85 was definitely lean for Apple, but they were far from going under. There was a major reorganization with Jobs being ousted and developing a new strategy without him.
Really, after reading your tirade, I'm really not sure why you even use Macs. Nevertheless, just clarifying a few points of misinformation.