One of my financial rules-of-thumb is “a dollar a day”: if I can get the cost down to that, it’s a no-brainer easy buy, I’ll get my money’s worth out of it (be it business or pleasure).
Apple devices, given their practical longevity, work out to a dollar a day for something I use every day, aggregate of hours per day.
If it costs a dollar a day, it’s not overpriced.
For example, you need a couch for your living room and you have a choice between top-of-the-line, high-quality leather couch that retails for $4,200 vs. a similar-looking discount furniture store brand that sells for $800.
Most people would immediately go for the lower priced couch, even knowing that the manufacturer might have taken a lot of shortcuts and used cheaper materials.
However, that $4,200 couch lasts for 30 years and that $800 couch starts getting frayed and tattered after five years and you have to replace it again.
Cost of the $4,2000 couch = .46 cents a day
Cost of the $800 couch = .38 cents a day
Many people don't think that way but I bought into it at an early age. I've been married 28 years and moved three times and my wife and I still have much of our original furniture that we bought when we got married (all solid teakwood bedroom set for example).
Another example of "utility" goes like this. You buy a cheap coffeemaker from Wal-Mart, use it for a few weeks and then stick it in a closet, destined for a later yard sale, because it makes lousy coffee. Or you buy a top-of-the-line Bunn coffee maker and end up using it everyday for 10 years.