It's actually not. As a user I'd expect the device to wake up and still have the same IP address via a continuation of the lease.
Yes, the correct way would be a longer lived DHCP lease, but el-cheapo ISP routers often lock down such settings.
now we essentially have sleep++ and no option to set it back to vanilla sleep.
When I put a machine into standby, I want it to go in a standby state, and then stay there until I explicitly wake it -- not keep doing whatever background tasks the OS developers, app developers, or whatever other third parties think they need to keep doing.
Most users don't know what IP addresses even are, let alone care what theirs is. I don't think Apple is (or should be) optimizing for you.
For most people these days the primary device is their phone, and so that is the model that modern laptops are trying to follow, as that is what most users will expect.
I thought this was a solved issue. How are all OSs suddenly so bad at this? I only really trust on and off anymore.