This is certainly an interesting way to characterize dropping support for old hardware. What is a reasonable way to go about hardware deprecation in your view?
Apple won't. We all know that. The Broadcom wi-fi chips and the subtle differences in their embedded architecture vs. conventional PCs means x86 Macs will never be adequately supported without Apple's stewardship.
Especially when I can keep getting both feature and security updates for Windows on hardware that's the same age (or older) as the EOL Apple hardware.
The reasonable way to go about hardware deprecation is to not do it until that hardware is Truly Gone™, buy some actual definition of Gone that isn't an arbitrary number of years or versions.