(Many seasoned Mac users disable 'automatic updates' for this very reason!) But there is also a case to be made for holding off until one gets a sense of how much else can be expected to 'break' with an OS update. Yes it is possible to immediately upgrade a NOS Mac to macOS to Ventura. (What's 'normal' to Apple and to a subset of affluent power users who have been conditioned to upgrade every 2-3 years strikes the rest of the world as nuts.) (I know because I am one of them, having just purchased a new 2020 27' iMac with Catalina pre-installed on Prime Day.) When a customer unboxes a new piece of hardware only to find upon that first hour of use that the App Store refuses, even, to permit a download of the original pre-installed OS for recovery purposes, the impression is that Apple is grossly overstepping the bounds. This discussion is still relevant because *new* 2020 Macs can still be found for purchase in 2023 from Best Buy, Amazon and elsewhere. (Doubtful, however, that anybody at Apple loses sleep over breaking stuff that their customers rely on and can't replace for one reason or another.) But at some point every OS leaves behind a certain percentage of hardware/software - and that short lifecycle seems to be what many take issue with.
Indeed, there are newer macOS since Catalina, most of which are compatible with Macs built after ~2017.
