Catering to the majority (of its niche, which is non-Windows, easy to use, all-in-one, curated experience, upmarket PCs) and not to even further niches?
Over $20B in annual revenues with at least $3B in net profits, that's a hellofa niche. So the question is, why is Apple not updating/refreshing Mac lineups more often, and why don't they have a decent pro model?
As for getting to even better numbers, well, they had decent pro models (and even servers) back in the day, and they (presumably) know that they don't sell that much.
Most people who buy Macs are not very price-sensitive, and they decidedly buy them so they don't have to personally build that "much better hardware".
So, this option does exist, but it's the exact opposite about what they want.
Assuming they even need the increased power in the first place, which most (except creatives pros in video and 3D) don't.
i could almost turn "could macs be good value?" into a mandatory interview question, because those who say no don't understand how trading money for time works. working with such fools is incredibly tedious and painful.
I would advise against that, unless you are in the habit of interviewing people who value their time at $200+ per hour, such as in your above example. Otherwise, their answer may be coming from a slightly different mindset.
Besides, being "the crazy ones" and being a cpu/gpu power hungry is orthogonal. Apple never sold the most powerful computers (except briefly and accidentally, when Motorola did something right).
Just friendly and easy to work with computers -- which the "crazy ones" could get going with without needing an IT debarment. A "crazy one" can be e.g. a human rights activist or some novel graphic artist, that just needs a simple computer to work with.