I would be far more sad at the battery life of any Intel Mac anymore! Having been on Apple Silicon for some five years now, I can't imagine going back.
My buddy runs an independent video production company and bought a specced out Mac Pro for $12,000 in 2019. Probably still quite capable and battery life doesn't matter on that.
But I also understand it being deprecated and for Apple it's only gonna simplify platform improvements going forward to drop a second supported architecture. And at any point in computing history, 6 years was a decent lifespan for a machine.
Considering that Intel Macs will still be more than functional and provide a great user experience for many years afterwards even with Tahoe, not something that can be said for Win/PC machines, strikes me as being rather good customer support even if the breakpoint does seem like a bit of a short EOL.
But I now plenty of people who bought Win machines and with the next update they basically turned into molasses, all while dealing with horrible trackpads and bad performance.
Your tone deaf suggestion precisely underlies why Linux is not dominant. Obviously the question is about the MacOS environment, whether good or bad. No amount of installing any of the tens of thousands of quirky Linux distros will e.g., give you Continuity, cross-device calling, let alone the simplicity of setup. You try simply opening the case of some headsets that immediately connect using Linux.
It’s like suggesting a Cummings tractor will pull a load all day long, but the majority of people are looking for comfort and being able to navigate city streets and the school pickup line. Is tone deaf. Yes, but I don’t think anyone here is in need of being told about Linux. “Do you have a minute to talk about your lord and savior, Linux?”