Releasing a new major version of your OS yearly is insane.
On macOS you can stay one major release behind. So, stay on mojave until the successor to catalina is released, then upgrade to catalina. You still get security fixes and full software ecosystem support, but far fewer issues with buggy updates.
On android and iOS you don't really have good options to my knowledge.
Wikipedia is indicating two major releases have support, not just one ("End of support date" in the table):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#Release_history
As a data point when doing stuff in a High Sierra macOS VM earlier today, Homebrew still seems to be making binary packages for High Sierra too.
So the "two releases behind" seems right.
I feel pretty sure this must be common because I still see apps and infrastructure, even last month, coming out with updates related to Catalina compatibility.
It sucks though. I have a Google Pixel phone and never hesitate to apply updates, I even look forward to them. I don't think I've ever had an Android phone experience the sort of severe regressions that occur regularly with Apple updates.
I've been a MBP user for a long time, but I'm really starting to wonder if it's time to take a leap soon. I've been using this laptop for maybe a year and:
1. I'm scared to upgrade to the latest OS
2. The screen's coating has been damaged and has key-print impressions on it. This always happens and Apple seem incapable of fixing it.
3. The latest butterfly keyboard has at least not broken on me for 8 months or so, but the options, C and A keys have worn through and now have holes in them. This started happening a few generations ago and now seems like a regular problem that I'm just supposed to accept.
4. Very soon after getting it something happened to the metal such that it has a large discolouration on the bottom left, of a type I've never seen before. Nothing seems to fix it.
5. The screen routinely gets a yellow splotch in one of the corners if the laptop has been in my backpack for a while.
The problem is that despite not even really having improved for years, macOS is probably still the best OS out there. Linux on laptops has never worked well - my colleagues who try to use it routinely have issues with webcams not working properly. Windows laptops seem to vary wildly in quality and many of them have stupid design flaws like putting the webcam at the bottom of the screen instead of the top, coming loaded with crapware, anti-virus products that cripple performance, Windows is still a rats nest of weird problems under the hood. And their way to make it better for developers is to just bundle Linux?
I really wish there was more competition in the laptops-for-technical-people space.
If you want good linux support on a laptop you need to do some research, but there are options. Thinkpads, XPS, ... They’re just not that much cheaper than a macbook if you want comparable specs.
Been working fine for me since October 2018 for dual boot gaming & firmware updates. It will update to the latest version of LTSC when you start up.
Works with the latest hardware too, I am using it with a 5700xt (released last July, purchased in December) and a Ryzen 7 (also released last year). Only thing missing is the new Microsoft Store, if you search for it there's a repo on github which will let you install it.
For all the Windows 10 ISOs you need to use Rufus instead of normal dd/cat the ISO to a USB stick (doesn't work with dd/cat). Rufus works in a VirtualBox VM with USB passthrough. During the setup, select that you don't have a license key and then activate it later as mentioned in that post.
Very happy that I've helped someone.
Is Microsoft concerned users would like it too much? Maybe that’s a sign that their constant feature updates aren’t actually desirable and they should back off.