And 7-9 years is a fantastic support lifetime and yes, I know some folks who still use their 9 year old macbooks such as grandparents etc without major issue.
You have new android phones that ship with software 1.5 years old and NEVER get updated.
You have new android phones that ship with software 1.5 years old and NEVER get updated.
My 2011 model Lenovo came from the factory with a 2012 copy of Windows 8.
Lenovo released BIOS and driver updates to the 2011 machine at the end of 2019 and continue to do so. Windows 8 is EOL in 2023 with free upgrade paths to 8.1 which has a further out EOL date, meaning that the OS is still supported by both companies, as well.
Admittedly, however, your Android example is dead-on. Android seems to have always struggled with software updates; I blame version fragmentation along with very cheap (free in most cases) licensing costs, which spur on lower-quality vendors to take on the product.
The only solutions was to install linux and it worked.
So, even though I'm fully committed to the ecosystem and I love each and every apple product I still do think that having to trash a machine after 10 years isn't so good considering that those machines are usually still capable to work daily.