In all honesty, two generations behind is likely the best we'll ever get given the resource constraints on current porting efforts. I'm totally fine with that though. Buying prior gen laptops has been what I've always done since I was a kid, and I'm pushing 50 now. Buying current gen anything is a trap unless you absolutely need the fire power (and I certainly don't.)
Naturally, a hardware vendor can lock down whatever they want in their future hardware, that's their call, but specifically Apple hasn't. Maybe they will, maybe they won't, but in either case there are still millions of m1, m2 and m3 mackbooks already out there, why _not_ use them?
If/when Apple chooses to lock down future 3p boot options, it won't affect that pre-existing pool of hardware. Sure, eventually that pool of will dry up, or maybe in a decade I'll need something faster than an m3 (assuming it takes less than a decade to get m3 to where m2 is at today, which is fairly conservative), but maybe not. My requirements are fairly modest with the personal dev work I do, I'm sure plenty of folks are in the same boat. We might as well use what decent hardware already exists and is available now. If appearing to support Apple is the problem just cover your kit in silly stickers, that's what I do.
After all, it's not like Apple will make a dime off me buying their shit second-hand anyways...
