Agreed, I had a Z80 card in my Apple II and they are very different. I found assembly on the 6502 a little easier but the Z80 allowed me to run CP/M and that opened the door to a tone of SW.

Perhaps not, I'm mostly just familiar with the Z80 though so I might just be seeing what is familiar to me. ;)

It is about as Z80 as an ARM Cortex is a Pentium M.