A baseline Mac wasn’t any more expensive than the competition (IBM), it just wasn’t inexpensive like Commodore, Atari, and PC clones. Apple also had essentially the same price structure for decades, while PC clones raced to the bottom on both price and quality.
And the Mac II was actually priced better than most competitive systems—because those competitive systems were 16MHz 68020/68881-based workstations from Apollo, HP, Tektronix, Sun, et al. In early 1987, a name-brand 16MHz 80386 system with 80387 was comparably priced, which is why most people buying PC clones didn’t get a 386 until 1990-91 or so, around when the 80486 (and 68040) came out.
And the Mac II was actually priced better than most competitive systems—because those competitive systems were 16MHz 68020/68881-based workstations from Apollo, HP, Tektronix, Sun, et al. In early 1987, a name-brand 16MHz 80386 system with 80387 was comparably priced, which is why most people buying PC clones didn’t get a 386 until 1990-91 or so, around when the 80486 (and 68040) came out.