It's not all that bad these days ever since they added virtio support. Orbstack is well worth paying for as an alternative, but that won't solve anyone's procurement headaches either.
Oh! I wasn’t trying to make a big point except that paying for software isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and if you’re already invested in Macs you’re presumably OK with paying good money for good products.
Having used Docker Desktop on a Mac myself, it seems... fine? It does the job well enough, and it’s part of the development rather than production flow so it doesn’t need to be perfect, just unobtrusive.