that said, i have no issue with your choice. for some applications (eg video editing is the default choice for ads of UW monitors) it is really better.
i do have issue with you denigrating 2 monitors. it is not at all "an old hack".
I’ve been using an ultrawide since 2015 but have almost always had a second side monitor with it. The period where I didn’t have a second monitor was short as having a separate monitor has always come in handy. All of the extra space on an ultrawide is great but when you’re doing something that takes the whole screen, it still leaves you in the same position you would be with a single 16:9 display.
TBF my old setup was a decade old so it was merely a 24" (1920x1200) and a 19" (1280x1024 in portrait).
Though my new display has a much larger logical size, the inability to put something fullscreen on one of the monitors (whether the small one or the large one, depending on the content) is definitely one of the drawbacks I had a hard time getting used to, not only can it be inconvenient, it actually wastes space as I can't get rid of window decorations, which putting e.g. a video player or browser window in fullscreen allowed.
Sure but the Air and MBP already support 6k external displays.
They don’t support 2x4K.