Comment by jerlam

There is some reason to the madness, at least for connected Bluetooth devices.

Some people only have a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard (no wired devices), so the computer must maintain a connection to those devices so a mouse or keyboard click will properly wake the computer. But even when my laptop is closed and in my bag, it will turn itself on if I touch a connected Bluetooth devices even though it has no external monitor connected, until the laptop is burning hot with a dead battery.

I would say that requiring an external monitor connected or having the laptop open should be a requirement for turning the laptop on, except that monitors often go into sleep mode that requires the computer to wake them up and wait, and then we have all kinds of weird dependencies and people get really mad when their computer doesn't turn on.

There are just too many contradictory ways that people use their computers now. All wired devices, all wireless devices, clamshell, open but only external monitors, external monitors and laptop monitors, wireless external monitors via Sidecar, only remote access, etc. Apple used to have a "Allow Bluetooth Devices to Wake this Computer" option that addresses this exact use case but it was removed in recent versions of MacOS.