> old 16:10 Thinkpads with modern displays.
Yes you're talking about the really old 16:10 ones from the mid to late 2000s, right before they switched to 16:9 cause they were cheaper to make due to the HD TV era. Add then today they switched back to 16:10.
So no, it's no BS that scale allows for much cheaper products, but Apple could stick to 16:10 since they never catered to cheap and it would probably cost them more in SW dev and tooling to reengineer their OS GUI and chassis for 16:9 than to keep the production lines as is since their product line back then had like 3 laptops total.
And maybe start with good faith before screaming BS. No need to be rude just because people have different opinions and experiences than you.