Intel Macs are ancient and there isn’t a compelling reason to really even need to run Tahoe or Golden Gate on them. I still use a 2020 iMac, which is getting a little sluggish for some tasks, runs Sequoia mostly (main use is a GitLab runner for macOS based pipelines like testing iOS and macOS apps), or occasionally booting into Catalina for some ancient software I need to use a few times a year that doesn’t run on anything newer.
I wasn't making any case for supporting Intel Macs - they can still run run other OSes. Just pointing out a pattern I have observed with commercial operating system releases, which is not accidental in my opinion. (Personally, I stopped buying Macs since they started soldering the RAMs and SSDs and removed the ability to run others OSes - I find such practices suffocating for my computing needs).
Deprecating really old stuff is fine.