Saying that performance per dollar is higher on the 4070 than any previous xx70 card is damning it with faint praise. If it can't at least beat a 3070 or older there's not much reason for it to exist
Yeah, that's kind of like saying if Intel or AMD offered a CPU 2 years later at the same price but with 1% higher performance then it's totally fine and dandy. The ire people have isn't because it's the best 70-class card ever; no one doubts that. But names are just names, and people clearly see how bang per buck is stagnating.
Honestly, the best approach is to simply not buy Nvidia as frequently. If Nvidia want to be like Apple, then do the same thing as Apple customers. At some point, Apple customers realized that they didn't need to own the latest iPhone each generation because they got too expensive and/or good enough, so people simply upgraded less frequently. Heck, between spending money on a better phone or a better graphics card, I'd argue it's more worth it on the phone because at least it's something you'd use daily.
Ignore AMD here, as much as some people like to bring them into the conversation because they are a convenient scapegoat, because Nvidia's mind share and market share is so dominant that AMD really doesn't have much influence on Nvidia's game plans. It's the same reason why Apple doesn't give a wooden nickel about what Google or Samsung do in the smartphone market; they have a brand that's impenetrable and no one else makes an iOS phone, just like how no one else offers Nvidia's exclusive features. Apple doesn't even mention their competition in their marketing slides because they aren't trying to convince their competitors users to go Apple; they are trying to convince their own user base to upgrade in the same way Nvidia's biggest hurdle is trying to convince their own 80%+ market share user base to keep upgrading. Blaming AMD for rising Nvidia GPU prices is like blaming Google for Apple's expensive phones. In reality, Apple and Nvidia raises their prices on their own volition, specifically to the highest price their users will bear, so anyone who is gets mad that iPhones / Nvidia GPUs are expensive should blame Apple / Nvidia, not Google / AMD.
Shoot, it wouldn't even surprise me if Nvidia eventually accept that sales revenue of their gaming GPUs hit a plateau that they start rolling out paid software features. This strategy is the same that Apple took when they too realized that people were upgrading less frequently, so the only way to grow was to make money off of the already plateau'ed user base via subscriptions. Software sales have ridiculous margins, too, which JHH loves dearly.