It doesn't appear to me as a nostalgia for wintel at all. The author very aptly points out that standardization known from the PC platform is severely lacking in the ARM ecosystem. This makes ARM a good choice for digital "appliances," but not for general-purpose computers. Just the argument about kernel security updates is serious enough:

Imagine if you were buying x86 hardware. You might have to manage AcerOS, Dellbian, HPian, etc. Most of them have no security support (particularly for the kernel). Some are based on Debian 11 (released in 2021), some Debian 12 (released in 2023), and none on Debian 13 (released a month ago).

I wouldn't like to beg for kernel upgrades from my laptop manufacturer. (Apple is an exception here, because it's also an OS vendor)