@AironMan - I don't think this is in any way malicious on Apple's part, more like a kind of simplified approach to things. The M4 mini seems to behave the way older Macs did, except when certain ultrawide, 6K or 8K displays are connected - in which case (to comply with specs) the logic that populates display modes probably goes to a different path. Since this behavior is ok for most users and fulfills the advertised capabilities, it's probably fine by their standards, especially for an initial rollout. Apple engineers might feel that it does not make sense to have HiDPI resolutions available beyond a certain scale and certainly not at a native resolution level (which produces only a 2x supersampling), despite the fact that some users want this feature. Hopefully this will be tweaked in the future.
Also, there might be other factors there, like a balancing act - if the system thinks a display would not benefit much from some higher resolution options, it just does not provide that in case an other display is connected later on which needed that resource. This is because these Macs support different resolutions and refresh rates depending on the number and type of displays connected (see the specs - it can do 3x6K or 1x8K+1x6K). Obviously the system does not know the user's intent in advance about what kind of displays will be connected later on - so it is trying to be as economical as possible (since if 8K resources are granted to a connection unnecessarily, the user could later on connect 1 less external display).
