My point was in relation to your comment about these old machines being in use for a decade whereas "That fully loaded Macbook Pro will be outdated before the i

My point was in relation to your comment about these old machines being in use for a decade whereas "That fully loaded Macbook Pro will be outdated before the ink of the advert is properly dried." I think that software developers and computer enthusiasts back then wanted to upgrade as often as they would now (though I might still argue that even for developers the pace is less today than it was back then). For your "average office worker" or "average home computer user", I'm guessing that their computer will serve them well for longer today with less clear incentive for upgrading. I mentioned the web browser, word processing and such because those are things that many non-developers commonly do with computers. That 2009 MacBook Pro would likely continue to serve a non-developer just fine and the only reason they might consider upgrading is that Mac OS Sierra doesn't support it. In short, I think desktop/laptop machine replacement pace started dropping off for most people years ago. In the 80s the performance and storage improvements were way more meaningful than they are for many people than any time recently.