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Originally Posted by Shane R
Really?!? I'm not a Mac user and that doesn't sound like a platform I or anyone else would want to use. Yet their Mac and laptop sales are growing.
Something must be missing from your statement.
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No. I'm not missing anything.
Mac OSX.
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Releases of OS X have steadily dropped compatibility with earlier Macs.
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For the early releases of Mac OS X, the standard hardware platform supported was the full line of Macintosh computers (laptop, desktop, or server) based on PowerPC G3, G4, and G5 processors. Later versions discontinued support for some older hardware; for example, Panther does not support "beige" G3s,[58] and Tiger does not support systems that pre-date Apple's introduction of integrated FireWire ports (the ports themselves are not a functional requirement). Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard", introduced October 2007, has dropped support for all PowerPC G3 processors and for PowerPC G4 processors with clock rates below 867 MHz. Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard" supports Macs with Intel processors, not PowerPC. Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" requires a Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo or newer processor.
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The only thing I'm reading there is 'dropped support' and 'requires <newer stuff'.
During the Intel transition:
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PowerPC-only software was supported with Rosetta, though some applications eventually had to be rewritten to run properly on the newer OS X for Intel.
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Versions
It looks like the old OSX-versions were only supported for up to 3 years; with newer versions, this has shrunk to 1,5 to 2 years. At some point, you'll just hit a brick wall, where Apple won't support OSX version A, but successor B won't run on your current system.
Apple users don't really seem to care; at least not the ones I know.
(Obviously you'll hit that same brick wall with Microsoft as well, but it will take much MUCH longer. Most people will have bought a new PC long before support of a particular Windows-version is dropped.)
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In comparison, a Windows version since NT 4.0 is supported for 10 years, and newer versions of Windows normally run software written for older versions, often out of the box, sometimes with use of a few compatibility settings.
I've been running games written for Windows 98, and the mid-range systems of that time, on Windows 10 64-bit, on a computer having a thousand times (!) more memory and power than a system of that era. Knowing that Windows 10 will be supported in the current form up to at least 2025, that's almost 30 years (!) of compatibility. (I'm assuming MS is not suddenly going to remove features such as running 32-bit software on a 64-bit system, or do other weird things.)
Even though I've got a lot of bad things to say about Microsoft and Windows, I have to say that they've mostly got their compatibility sorted. The only exception normally are very old devices on new Windows versions, and the other way around, because manufacturers don't create the drivers.