I'm writing this on a ten year old Mac with specs in line with what I see on dell.com as still available in new systems, with Apple still delivering some software updates yearly. All the apps I use have been available in both Intel and Apple Silicon flavors. I'm not sure how much more I can expect from Apple / the Apple ecosphere.
You say:
> specs in line with what I see on dell.com as still available in new systems
But I'm not sure if you mean the relative performance of an entry-level chip like the N100 or the raw numbers like "6-8 core, 3.8GHz" - the performance may be fine for your use-cases but doesn't actually compare to decade-newer chips like M2 when pushed.
> Apple still delivering some software updates yearly
They deserve a lot more credit for this transition than the PPC-Intel one, that's for sure...
...what Mac are you using then, again? Because I have a 2017(!!!!) MacBook Pro that's completely unusable due to its terrible performance and fans going at 100% all the time.
Open it and clean the fan. After it, it will work like a new one.