One months salary is still an awful lot for something that no middle class family ever needed. If the goal is educational and/or recreational (games), then a 6502 machine could be had at a fraction of the cost and with a community. In the UK, the Macintosh basically didn't exist as far as I remember, my first 68000 machine was an Atari ST in 1986/7, still a fraction of the price of a Mac. I didn't see a Mac until the early nineties and it was by then nothing new or interesting (the OS was already considered technically obsolete).