[topher515]

Are you familiar with the concept of "pricing ladders"? The point of the entry level product is not to simply be "the economy model", it's to be feature deficient in just the right way to make you take a "step up" the ladder to the next model.

What I've observed is that Apple does this by targeting the base model with a storage option that's just below what's probably the sweet spot for price / usefulness in the current market. You'll likely be just frustrated enough to take the step up that ladder.

MKBHD has a very fast explainer on this effect in iPad pricing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiNYOZZLOyg

[benterix]

They do this trick with RAM/disk configs for all their product lines. This basically means that any useful config is relatively expensive, and I would never recommend their entry-level models to anyone.