I mean for all the things you can meme on Apple for, releasing products for the sake of releasing something isn’t something they’re known for. See Air Power.
For every AirPower there's a $999 ProStand. Apple is just a greedy company, like everyone else in tech. They are just more picky on the bullshit they sell, but they still sell bullshit.
I have a theory on those stands and stuff. It’s a marketing ploy as people will be talking about the absurdity of it and that’s free advertising for them.
And I hate every second of it on my work macbook. How one could think cutting out the middle from the space that has to house your applications menu(IntelliJs is huge for example) and your tray icons, which can be quite a lot too, and then not have a function to keep either of them from just disappearing behind that cutout is asinine.
No, this only hides it visually, you still run into the issue of content being hidden behind it. I now use bartender which allows me to at least put the tray icons in a dropdown that opens below the nodge.
But the fact this is necessary speaks volumes about Apples care for user experience