For 200$ you can order an acceptable, good looking laptop with 8 Gig ram and a low range Celeron quad core from China.

Gotta love apple. ^^

I cherish the memory of paying 60 Euros for my Apple HDMI adapter, another 40 for the VGA one, 80 Euros for a freaking charger,...

"Don't buy cables/adapters from Apple" has been the general rule for decades. Grab stuff like this from Monoprice and it'll probably run you $20.

"Don't buy RAM from Apple" was the general rule, but now they solved the pesky problem by soldering the RAM.

The nice thing about USB-C is that its a standard, so you don't have to buy it from Apple only anymore like before. For example I have https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K7C53K2 for $69, which is really useful: plug one cable in and everything is connected.

Always the same thing with Apple, you need to pay extra (actually premium) to get the things that used to be standard.