My Fujifilm X100VI shoots HEIC/HEIF, which is like the AVIF of H.265/HEVC. It seems to offer better compression than JPEG while having smaller file size. iPhone does this too. Why are you calling it an abomination?
I hope everyone switches over to AV1 or AV2 stills so we can have completely open image pipelines but It’s silly to say something is “DOA” when it’s been in use for 9 years (since 2017) by one of the world’s most popular consumer cameras (iPhone) and is now popping up in high end cameras. The company I work for (Notion) long ago had to start supporting HEIF uploads because a ton of our users expect their pictures to just work.
It'd still call it DOA if Apple are the only ones keeping it around. No one else is and no one else really cares. Also I think they have an ulterior motive - they are part of those who profit from patents on it. So they likely want to keep it around longer than others.