You can also replace the drive - see ifixit[^]

You are largely incorrect, it runs more than windows, since windows last I checked won't run OSX, but OSX will run Windows, and Apple hardware will run MS Windows, so exactly what was your issue? It sounds like you were trying to dev for windows on OSX, or doing a side project on OSX itself, otherwise your tools would have been the same.

I don't understand why you have this conviction that 'Apple' is inflexible or enormously expensive. If you want a quad core i7 laptop with a 600+MB/s SSD and high res (UHD or ~3K) screen with 7+ hours of battery life, Apple's products are priced at the low end. If you're wanting the cheapest laptop you can buy, well, then you should look elsewhere. The same goes for their other products. Yes, you can buy cheaper, but are you going to compare a Yugo to a Bentley or even a Ford Focus (the model you'd actually drive, not the base base base model)? They're different products intended for different markets. As for inflexible, how so, other than their phones, and even those can be jailbroken and you can do what you want.