> Has nothing to do with trying to impose additional restrictions.

For now, maybe. Consider the time when microsoft was partially successful to boot-lock arm devices: https://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2012/jan/12/microsoft-c...

The old adage "do not assign to malice what can be properly explained by stupidity" should not be blindly applied when it involves powerful companies.

I can assure you here that it works on some drives but not others because the boot chain on Apple Silicon Macs is written from scratch, not using UEFI.

Bugs are being worked out slowly, and there's no reason to assume bad intentions here. (I have an Apple M1 MacBook Air, and it boots from a Samsung T7 external SSD just fine)

IMO this line of thinking implies a lack of contextual understanding about Apple's culture, strategy, and history. Of course we can never predict 100% what big companies will do, but we can be pretty sure Apple isn't interested in doing that.