Hello everyone, I have been following this tread ever since it first started, I am also unsatisfied with how auto smooth works in 4.1 
I am currently working on an addon that tries to fix auto smooth in 4.1, it will be released once 4.1 is out.
The addon will automatically move the Smooth by Angle modifier the bottom of the stack and apply the same normals on all instances when the operation is used.
Also, it makes it easy to add/remove auto smooth modifier on many objects at once. Overall it should almost work the same way as in 4.0, it is even in the same menu and has the same name 
I hope it will make the transition over to Blender 4.1 a bit smoother. Let me know if I missed anything or have any feedback so I can fix it before its out
It can already be tested/download from the github-page
Edit - It is now officially released