Nothing wrong with AP203, it has the most support in other software's. Obviously AP214 would be nice for colors but the model is probably shrink-wrapped (AP242 is not needed, nobody needs PMI)
Just because it was withdrawn in 2005 does not exclude its wide use in industry
They are not even using the newest version of AP203.
I will feel free to ignore comments on AP242 from PTC if they can't be bothered to use it.Creo (and Onshape) both support STEP AP242 export, but customers may choose to export to an older version for better compatibility with third-party systems that have not implemented recent standards.
Generally, at export time, choosing the oldest format version which still has all of the features you need will make it most likely others will be able to open the data.