So the way to think about this period is like the Internet boom of the late 90's or the AI gold rush of today. Things got greenlit because no one quite knew what would be successful (frankly, most companies/people struggled to find a use for the 8 bit machines besides gaming, which is a hard sell to a lot of parents). The quirkiness of the architectures is a direct result of the industry being the Wild West. You wouldn't see it today because the industry has been established.
The real winners of the home-computer revolution were the ones who knew how to cut costs effectively, companies like Commodore and Sinclair, in order to grow the market -- and the market only really grew once component prices started falling once the 80s were underway.
My family was... a little different. My father, a mechanical engineer, actually had a use for computers in the home: when the force and mechanical advantage calculations on your novel engine design became too complex for programmable calculators, a more powerful desktop computer was just the tool needed. He got me a VIC-20, and later a TI-99/4A, so I would keep my grubby mitts off his expensive Tandy business machine.
But 256 byte scratchpad RAM, 16K accessible only through the videochip (and not from BASIC!?!), in 1983? Too little too late, regardless of price. C64's, ZX Spectrums etc were everywhere by then. Much more capable and not that expensive.