[SEJeff]

I'm saying the source is saying this is what to use, which was confirmed by reading the source and seeing the "deprecated" version was not even related to the project whatsoever.

Dan is the guy that has been with the docker project through the redhat fork and to the creation of podman from the very beginning. If he says podman machine is what to use, it is not deprecated. Have you ever listened to Dan speak? He's very pragmatic about these things.

Being one of the authoritative decision makers, if he says to use it, it is not deprecated. A literal 1 minute perusal of the podman upstream source confirmed.