You didn't get it. Of course it was easier, but the price per coin was also lower, so it wasn't more profitable to mine back then.
This is confused. It might not have been more profitable a past moment t to mine at moment t. But it was still more profitable (all things considered) to mine at t. Suppose there is a penny stock that shoots up to a stable and reasonably valued $100/share. It's more profitable to buy the stock when it's a penny stock than it is to buy it at $80/share. That you couldn't buy too much with a share of the penny stock when it was $0.01/share is irrelevant.
And for the "very expensive mining-devoted rigs", a Jalapeno is way cheaper than a good mining-GPU, so it doesn't really get more expensive to start mining.
It's very inexpensive to start mining. In fact, it's close to free if you already own a computer and mine while you're using your computer for other purposes. If you mine with your laptop while you wouldn't otherwise be using it, your cost to start mining is your electricity cost and the depreciation of your hardware.
Whether or not it is profitable to mind on a laptop now, of course, depends upon how high the value of BTC goes. If it skyrockets, I suppose laptop mining now could be profitable. Of course, mining with a $30,000 machine will be immensely MORE profitable in that scenario. In that scenario, the rich early adopters of $30,000 rigs will become vastly more wealthy than everyone who can't afford the $30,000 rig. I take it that, to some extent, LiteCoin has done a better job here.