Wow, so much unwarranted hate. It's one download and you have everything updated. If you believe you do not need a new OS version for your laptop for whatever reason, you can always keep using Ventura or whatever you're running now and update that until it is end of support.
I don't think you understand how helpful it is for "normal" users to push a button and have a brand new version of everything. And being afraid of new features that you don't use... pretty irrational.
It is by no means irrational to hesitate on a new major release of an Apple operating system. MacOS upgrades have caused many people all kinds of issues, for instance a Big Sur update broke a metric fuckton of USB-C hubs and they didn't address it for 6 months.
I updated from High Sierra to Catalina and it broke a lot of things. Ultimately sold it in the used goods market and switched it for a new laptop. Installed Linux on it and haven't felt the need to go back to Mac since.
I don't think you understand how helpful it is for "normal" users to push a button and have a brand new version of everything. And being afraid of new features that you don't use... pretty irrational.