Funny thing

I thought I don't have that behavior because I never noticed it. So I wanted to say here that this is not enabled by default or at least I don't have it - then checked in in TextEdit and I was shocked to actually get it :D

Then I thought: "ok, I mostly write code so probably this behavior is disabled in code editors like Xcode" - but: no, it works there either. One exception I found is the Terminal app.

It seems that any character repeating I did was manual, without holding a key.

So, since I never really noticed that (not sure when it was introduced, but you are talking about years...) I think it is not a big deal breaker after all. At least for me, maybe people who write more text are more annoyed by it.