The AW is more than good enough for fitness for me. I don’t really need anything that my old Forerunner did that the AW doesn’t do. And my daughter has some sort of Garmin (can’t recall the model - Vivoactive?) that shows at least some notifications from iOS on her watch - that would be the thing that I would miss from the AW. So, I could probably easily get by with that watch.
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What “editing” can you do in Preview that cannot be done on an iPad? The Files app on iPadOS can open PDFs, fill in forms and add annotations. You can use an Apple Pencil, if you want.
I generally agree with most of your comments.
I’m not prepared to let Apple off the hook so easily. A 2TB SSD for a laptop, esp a few years ago when I bought this, was prohibitively expensive. A non option for all but the rich. Cloud storage is a reality and will become more so. Dropbox syncs like a champ all the time. But I have had many times when iCloud Photo Library, iCloud Drive, and other services have been not only buggy but downright sluggish, if not completely stuck, using the same devices and internet as Dropbox is using. All of that can be blamed on no one but Apple.
That will solve the PDF editing issue. It doesn’t solve the fact that I need musescore which only runs on macOS and iGigBook Pro which only runs on iPadOS. If either one could cross the aisle, this problem would go away. Only Apple can fix that. Apple Silicon might. But they have made the portability optional for developers to opt into, and that already troubles me.
It’s true that 2 TB and 4 TB SSDs are expensive, but it has long been a given that the most optimal workflow often requires throwing money at the problem. That’s why people buy Mac Pros. 
I’ve not seen the kind of performance problems with iCloud Photos that you have, I guess, but my Photos library is only 148 GB, which is a far cry from the 1.3 TB you’re dealing with. In my experience, iCloud Photos works pretty well.
I’d argue that Apple has done what it needs to with Mac Catalyst. It’s up to the developers of those apps to make them work for both macOS and iPadOS—it’s not like that’s at all unusual these days.
You can’t answer notifications on the Vivoactive (or any other Garmin watch) with iOS. That’s Apple’s fault, but true nonetheless. Even if you could, there’s no dictation, and inputting text into a Garmin watch is laborious (no Scribble). There are limited complications on the watch faces, so I can’t customize to have wind speed, hourly weather, moon phase, battery state, and a sun graph on the watch face of my Fenix 5+ like I do with my Apple Watch (with the caveat that since Garmin allows third party watch faces, someone somewhere might have exactly the same itch as you do, but it’s very unlikely). A few weeks ago I used my Fenix 5+ to replace my Apple Watch for an afternoon since the Apple Watch didn’t charge (either someone unplugged my charger or I simply didn’t get it on the charger right). It’ wasn’t a horrible experience (I even used Garmin Pay), but it was primitive. I couldn’t control audio play on my iPhone from my Fenix, for example.
The Apple Watch can’t pair with any ANT+ sensors, and only a limited number of Bluetooth sensor types. So, yes, for casual use it’s fine, and I’ve used the Strava app on my Apple Watch when I forgot my Fenix for casual hikes a couple of times. But if suddenly you develop an interest in, say, running power, forget it with the Apple Watch.
(Of course, running power is something of a minor fad with several competing versions. Cycling power is widespread and necessary for anyone who thinks of competitive cycling, and Apple doesn’t support it. Even I have a power meter, and I’m not a competitive cyclist.) If you want to navigate and record an activity simultaneously, that’s easy on those Garmin devices, like my Edge 830, with maps and navigation abilities, but I don’t know of any way to do that on the Apple Watch (the usual “someone may have written an app” applies, but I haven’t heard of any). You can certainly use Maps to navigate, but how do you record an activity at the same time? Does the Strava app allow you to use Strava Routes (which is how I construct routes for my Garmin devices)?
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Remember the iPhone initially required a computer for setup, backup, and loading some content. Over time, Apple solved those issues and let the phone work without a computer.
The goal for the Apple Watch has always been to work without a phone, but there are obstacles. As @ace noted, setup is a big one. How do you log on to a wifi network that requires a password, or a wifi network that requires clicking through a signin screen?
Also, Bluetooth takes a lot less power than wifi or LTE, which is why the watch prefers talking to the phone over BT whenever possible. Going solo with just wifi and LTE would significantly impact battery life.
I’m sure someday Apple Watches will work without a phone, but we’re not there yet.
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So, again, I said that I could make do with another watch if I need to. So, to answer this, I could live without replying to notifications, scribble, etc. Even with the AW, 99.9% of the time I do these things on the phone. What the watch gives me is the ability to know if I need to answer something now or if I can wait until later.
There are limited complications on the watch faces, so I can’t customize to have wind speed, hourly weather, moon phase, battery state, and a sun graph on the watch face of my Fenix 5+ like I do with my Apple Watch
Again, fine with me. My AW complications are battery, weather temp, date, and activity rings. I can do without activity rings. I can easily do without weather temp as well. If I couldn’t have the day of the month - again, I can get by without it. Most days I know which day it is.
I couldn’t control audio play on my iPhone from my Fenix, for example.
Again, something I do rarely with the watch. I almost always do this with the audio controls of my headphones, and I change the volume the same way, or I just press the volume buttons on the phone in my pocket.
The Apple Watch can’t pair with any ANT+ sensors, and only a limited number of Bluetooth sensor types. So, yes, for casual use it’s fine, and I’ve used the Strava app on my Apple Watch when I forgot my Fenix for casual hikes a couple of times. But if suddenly you develop an interest in, say, running power, forget it with the Apple Watch.
Not something I will do. At this point in my life, I am trying to get runs in as long as my knees, feet, hips, etc., will allow. The metrics that the AW capture are more than good enough for me. (All I really care about are time and distance, and when I started running, I measured distance by driving the reverse route with my car. If I was running a trail, well, I just guessed based on how long it took me.)
Biking for me is a cross-training activity that I do with my bike on a trainer in the basement and I just do a certain amount of time. I have a bike computer that measures distance, and even that isn’t necessary - I just do 45 minutes a couple of times a week. Sometimes I use the elliptical machine instead; that doesn’t even measure distance, just revolutions. Again, fine with me.
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It’s also true that most people don’t need high performance for all their files. most people have tons of files that they rarely access. So if you’re on a budget, you can get a smaller SSD (maybe 256 or 512 GB) to hold the OS, applications and your most frequently-used documents. Then use a 2TB or larger hard drive to store everything else.
This is the theory behind Apple’s Fusion Drive and it (mostly) works, as long as the SSD part is big enough (which it isn’t in many of Apple’s deployments).
For myself, the bulk of my storage is my media collection - photos, videos and music. They don’t need to be on high speed devices because they are not high bandwidth media. Even an HD video file has no problem playing off of a hard drive, even connected at USB 2.0 speeds. So that can move to an external hard drive, leaving lots of free space on an internal SSD.
Of course, if you aren’t strapped for cash, having a large SSD is better. My point is simply that it’s not your only option if you need a lot of storage on a device. Even if you’re talking about a laptop, you can get a pocket size 2TB hard drive and plug it in to a USB port when you need it and leave it in the laptop’s bag when you don’t.
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I’ve done away with desktop Macs more than 35 years ago. I typically have an active Macbook Air and an older backup MBA that stays behind and manages external storage. An iPhone, but that’s mainly a phone and for those things that need it (such as my iPad when there is no Wifi…) Currently I use my iPad for most things (and often use it even to access my MBA over VNC for brief checks).
Currently transferring quite some functionality to a Raspberry Pi (many things I use will fall by the wayside if I update to Catalina). Maybe I’ll update some day, but maybe also I’ll discover also that I don’t even need a Mac any more…