Well, Apple has a pattern of obvious screwups like Butterfly keyboard and obsolescence scams like the whole SSD design.

Unless they stop these anti-consumer policies everything Apple does is Gate worthy.

Your optimism about SSD prices is IMHO unjustified.

NANDs are afaik still produced in 14-15nm so the only way they get more capacity is stacking multiple layers.

So even if they add more and more layers the price of these NANDs will run into a price/capacity wall.

Have you actually checked if the drives are really dead and it’s not the SATA controller itself or other factors?