Earlier quoted context omitted.
$49,900 for a Symbolics 3620 [1], $9,995 for a Lisa [2], $2,495 for a Macintosh 128k [3]. Affordability was a big priority with the Macintosh, and I'm thoroughly impressed what they managed to do with so little resources. So obviously, a Lisp Machine environment was far out of reach of even most experts at the time. However things progressed and I wouldn't be surprised if a PPC 604 box could run circles around a 3620…
The only problem: you could not do anything with a Mac 128k. Especially not development. Things looked much brighter with the Mac II. But even there you needed expensive 32MB or more RAM, a disk with VM, a large screen, an Ethernet card, a graphics card, for a useful setup. Plus a license of MCL. In sum that was cheaper than a Symbolics, though. Performance was okay for the time, but started to look better with 68040…
What I meant when I brought up the PPC 604 is that by the mid-90s cost of hardware was no longer a big issue in providing users with powerful computing environments. But it's clear that power isn't really what sells. Not even to developers, if you look at some of the more brain-dead environments and languages out there.