Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Office is a different story.
It's an application, not a platform.
Different rules.
The OS is tied to the hardware and you can't move it to a different system, whereas you can migrate an Office license to different hardware when you buy a new computer. The OS being tied to the hardware makes having usable hardware with an unsupported OS is bound to be annoying, especially if it keeps you from accessing full functionality. Apps don't typically become riskier or lose functionality when support ends.The
(That's where the Win10 support rule of "hardware usable life" makes sense.)
It really an, ahem, Apples and Oranges situation, OSes and applications. 
How long does Apple support, say iWork?
From what I hear, the current version 13 doesn't support documents from version 9, 2009. So they supported it for 5 years? That's about right for applications. Few consumer applications get more.
Now, enterprise applications are a different breed but mostly because support is paid for. Those get supported as long as money money money keeps rolling in. |
Apple has always had the policy of not supporting older versions after a given time. That's been a big difference between Apple and Microsoft over the years. Another big difference has been that Apple proactively attempts to discourage the use of undocumented API's by breaking them every so often.
In general, with Android products, especially when the carriers customize it, you know up front that the carrier is only going to support it for a couple of OS upgrades if that. You pretty much have to root the phone at that point if you want to upgrade.