Apple aim themselves at people who can afford to buy their products and stay with them in the future. They strategically avoid the busy and therefore low-margin markets.
My daughter got a £900 laptop (the cheapest they do) and it's a quality product, to go to £500 they'd cheapen the image of the brand. They're expensive but almost every Apple gadget is a pleasure to use and therefore gets the users to stay and upgrade.
Yeah understand that I got a MacBook Pro in 2011 and haven’t had a single problem with it specked it out 4 years ago and with an ssd drive! Still fast as fcuk. Just saying if they had a budget laptop they would clean up the laptop market.