> yes, do not buy equipment that has acquired so much tech debt that it still requires telnet.

No, you already own this capital equipment. It's the laptops running macOS that are ephemeral and disposable.

I don't care for excuses or workarounds; why did they do it?

It was an explicit decision whilst leaving a lot more—arguably more useless—garbage in.

Every OS that removed telnet did so for a symbolic reason, not because it was helpful technically.