I imagine the author saw this release as "macOS Tahoe but not sucky"

I liken it to Windows Vista and Windows 7. Although fundamentally similar operating systems under the hood, Windows 7 smoothed out Vista's kinks and brought forth additional polish.

I wouldn't mind if they (unofficially) adopted a tick-tock release cycle. New features on even years, refinement and under-the-hood changes on odd years.