But then....apple began to price itself out of the common market, while Windows based machines went down in price, but excluded the programs that used to come bundled with it.
I get that, but what I think you don't quite understand is that you're comparing Apples to Oranges here, or in this case, "1956's Corvettes to 2016 Corvettes". The original Mac that you started with is not even remotely related to the current Operating system in absolutely ANY way (outside of the name of the company)... I never used the older operating systems, or the older Macs. I was a Commodore Amiga guy, but when I try to use -- for example -- System 7 on the old Macintosh, it's completely unbearable to OS X 10.11 (today's OS).
As for price, it's actually a case of "you get what you pay for" in most cases... I recently moved my dad from his typical "cheapest PC he could buy" to an i5 Mac Mini and he's EXTREMELY happy now. He doesn't get bogged down in how to get Windows to work, he just clicks an icon and it works. There's also the fact that the hardware in today's Mac Mini is custom designed and -- so far -- far more reliable than your average big-box "Dell" or "HP" which uses commodity parts which have a much higher failure rate.
That being said, I'm not your average user. In what I do (video production), I needed a high end Mac (Intel i7 or better) but I also needed two monitors. Trouble is, a Mac Mini couldn't handle my workload, so that left me with the Mac Pro which starts at what... $3000?
To that end, I went down to MicroCenter locally (think old school electronics store for computer parts) and bought all the stuff to hand-build a high-end PC (i7, 64gb RAM, 1TB SSD Drive, high end video card, etc) and that cost me about $1200. I bought two 27" high resolution (1440p) monitors for about $600 and then I installed Mac OS X on it. Now for all intents and purposes, I have the ultimate Mac Pro-level machine for under $2000...
Would I rather have a Mac Pro? Absolutely, but even I have a price point...
(making your point for you)..
Wayne