@cdevroe the price difference is a sad reality of Apple today. My wife likes gifting me tech toys. Two years ago, I got an Alienware desktop. Fully pimped, it cost less than half of what she was looking at the other day - an MBP on apple.com, moderately configured was $3500! There's milking it, and then there's Apple's way of milking it.

About your point on needing a Mac to dev for iOS. Not truly. There are enough subscription services out there for native and non-native apps that will build your code in their mac clouds. It's a hack, but not a dirty one.