Why is this considered unreasonable?
I agree that is was unreasonable back in the 90s, 30 years ago, but we also now expect computers to come with a few TB of storage rather than a few GB -- times have changed.
No, we don't. Modern Macbook which is overpriced elite computer sells with 256GB storage. There're plenty of laptops selling with 120GB storage.
I'd argue that since we migrated from HDD to SSD, we expect computers to come with less storage than before. I had 200GB HDD in like 2005 or something like this.
You can get as pedantic as you want over the exact sizes, but someone buying a computer today expects more storage than someone who was buying a computer in the early 90s.
its just that our industry is a joke, imagine they'd sell cars with three wheels and carge you extra for the 4th.
If you bough a overpriced elite computer, and potentially other parts of that ecosystem of products, why would you not pay for overpriced elite cloud storage as well?
That is very reasonable thinking from Apple.
However if you agree with the proposition of attempting to supply a reasonably "lean core" with extensions, if said lean core is too opinionated, you will, soon or later, either have to adapt your workflow, or workaround said lean core.
I think a somewhat similar thing applies to silverblue ( https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/ ) and it's very hard to actually use it as intended (only using things inside flatpak/toolbx), without messing with the overlay system. I very often feel the need to replace half of the "provided" applications, and as such it would be in fact better if they were not supplied in the first place.