I find it interesting that seemingly every other vendor does their best to maintain backwards compatability or at least some support.
Apple: Nope, go buy our new stuff $$$ :)
Apple fans: okay :)
(Sent from my Intel NUC that stopped getting GPU drivers after a year.)
I'll promptly admit my bias: I've been on macs as my daily driver for 20 years. But that's for a reason — the hardware is great, the software is good, and the support for old hardware is honestly amazing. I do lots and lots of hand-me-downs to parents, siblings, the spouse, and lots of those devices still work, with the latest OSes, years and years down the line. I have a friend that just replaced an old 13" Macbook that was 12 years old and working great.
Find me a company that does that and is as good in terms of build quality and I'll be immediately interested.
I disagree. As an example, Macs stuck on 11 (Big Sur) stopped getting updates in 2023.[1] That includes Macs released until ~2014-2015, which are still usable in terms of hardware.[2]
I wouldn't call that amazing at all.
Because Apple doesn't have to compete on merits (as your comment points out), they just have to convince you to upgrade on a regular basis. Their routine depreciation and deliberate gimping of old hardware is evidence that Apple does not want you to keep using their devices once they tell you its time to stop.