Apple made a non-technological and purely artificial and somewhat capricious decision to not sell a product that was worthy of the Apple brand.
They continue down this road because next quarter is more important than next year, and sycophants continue to buy unusable products just to show off the Apple logo to people who don't view it as a Veblen good.
Apple could choose to sell to everyone, but instead sell to a minority. This is a choice. During recessions, it is not a good choice, and we have been in an almost persistent global recession since 2008.
As long as Apple can claim they have a $1T market cap, nobody wants to hear that the emperor is buck naked.
