well... suggest to return the camera if he does not feel like that he should spend $1K on this. i spent about 1.2K on this camera last year (a month after i started to learn and decided to dig more in photography).
1. noise level increase at linear (not sure how he comes up with this, scientific measurement?). yes, i do care about noise level, but i do not care really much about chromatic noise, but color noise. he can buy t4i or t5i, it is of course cheaper and will outcomes better noise level comparing to 7d, imo.
2. buffer... comparing to his 1D? come on...
a. it is 1d series. canon always allow more power on this series
b. how many 1d megapixel? 11.4
c. how big buffer that he wants?
3. video (no comment since i do not do video)
4. he can hide those autofocus points away as if he does not need to see them.
buying and using camera with knowledges, not sitting there and complain about it. if not being happy, return it. i actually use my 30d and 7d more often than my 5d mark iii. why is that? simply because i am not satisfy with that i have learned. i want to see how far i push myself with shooting in low light with old camera...
do not care how good iso that you have, if subject is not illuminated, then flash ought to be used to outcomes a better image quality if trying to perform a portrait shoot. for street, do not care much about quality... care more about capturing moments. i was one of those who refuse to use flash before and have to admit that using flash in the right way is not easy at all.
below is an example of using canon 30d | 50mm f/1.4 and shooting my mess in low light that (recently shot) while i was trying to learn and understand more about on camera direct flash, yes direct flash no bounce (note: nailed this image with one shot after calculating based on my method of using flash, a little bit slow but fun. this image is straight out of camera, nothing modify or on camera preset. neutral/faithfull picture style if anyone would like to know.) and keep in mind that quality of this image is facebook's image quality