Pop! OS hasn't been updated in a couple years now, making it an absolute relic. As far as I know none of the Pop! OS apps have been either.

I think you are a bit misinformed on the situation. The core gnome-apps are struck on version 42.5 (which is ancient) but apps like Firefox, libre office, steam, etc. have been getting updates to keep them up to date. They might miss a sub version here or there but these are more or less upto date. The kernel and mesa graphic stack are also relatively up to date (not as modern as arch, fedora or opensuse tw but close enough) while the nvidia drivers are just as modern as on other distros(its their USP after all). Native packages of other 3rd party apps might old but you always have flatpak for those.

What I am trying to say is that pop os is still recommendable. I was using it until a few months ago when I changed devices leading to some distro hopping after which I have settled on universal blue's rebase of fedora silverblue. It is completely possible that if I had not switched from nvidia to amd, I would still be on pop os.