How to even start here.. Calling the ipad inexpensive will make people in most of the world to laugh at you (even the discounted stock of ipad 9th is unapproachable for many). While a guitar at a local store (just looked it up) costs under 80 EUR, needs no apps, no power, no subscriptions, has no EOL, doesn't have a battery that will go bad. Yes you need time to learn, but you do not necessarily need to invest more money with an analog instrument.

I'm not touching the first part of your post.

I’ve never seen a guitar under about $300US new that was actually playable without some serious attention from a guitar shop, and on the lower end they’ll probably just tell you there’s not much they can do to make it better. They may need frets filed down to remove rough edges, neck adjustments, to simply have the tuners replaced because they’re so poorly-made they basically don’t work, et c.

Guitars that cheap are similar to crappy small-key $40-80 electronic keyboards that can only sound like three notes at a time and sound terrible doing it—they’re so bad that they will tend to frustrate and turn off even a beginner.

Yes, a good Guitar will cost you more than 300 USD. But in 20 years you will still have that guitar.

Buy an ipad mini for 500 USD: you might be able to replicate the sound, but you will need to replace it in two.

What I've seen generally, is interns being given non-essential non-time sensitive tasks that will help them grow, and depending on how they do and how they approach the task, they may get a position offer near the end of their internship.

So far I have not seen interns expected to do real, important work.

That being said, I'm in the EU, so things might be different where you are located.