I don’t know anything about the optical quality of modern consumer telescopes, so can’t comment on that issue. But as a semi pro photographer, you are 100% correct about the APODs. The worst one I’ve seen recently was Sep 28, Furious Sky Over Mount Shasta. I could live with the Star Glow filter they used, but not the composited nebula and the fact they blew the MW up about 4times. Or took it with a different focal length lens. There’s no way the MW is seen that large from Earth.
I find most of the images that were taken from earth, with earth being a big part of the subject, to be manipulated. By the way in the APOD image you mentioned, they did disclose the image had been manipulated, a composite etc.