alt Hacker NewsA Wang word processor - as used by Stephen King - was around $12,000.
In the CP/M market, small business Z80 systems with a hard drive could easily top $10k.
The Lisa was pitched at those markets, not people playing 8-bit games.
The Mac hit the midpoint between the two markets to create something new - desktop metaphor computing just barely at the absolute high end of the privileged consumer market.
With the original Mac 128 you got the world's most expensive toy computer. But with no significant games.
It was basically a proof-of-concept brand-building product for early adopters and developers. It wasn't until the Mac 512 that you could actually use it without worrying about RAM limitations.
Stephen King famously did a lot of his work on typewriters, and often claimed it was part of his creative process. Not a great example, as publishing had odd ecosystems up until Aldus PageMaker (1985) revolutionized later Mac markets.
The Lisa was simply a delusional mismatch from the kits and retail consumer products Apple had sold up to that point.
No different from NVIDIA inferring a $12k RTX 6000 GPU is for gamers, when a $500 PS5 or $800 steam deck is also popular with home users. =3
"The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes." (Theodor Reik)