> My real wish is that one day, computer or smartphone hardware might last at least 5 or even 10 years. I know software is evolving quickly, but there comes a p

> My real wish is that one day, computer or smartphone hardware might last at least 5 or even 10 years. I know software is evolving quickly, but there comes a point where I don't think you need to upgrade your hardware, the hardware is just fast enough to do certain things with today's software. At one point, software should stop changing so often. Then maybe we won't need to toss hardware anymore. I just sold a 4.5 year old 15" MacBook Pro for A$1550, it was originally A$3500. That makes the TCO equation look very nice indeed. And we only replaced it because my wife got a 12" for travel. I have the next model along 15" MBP (still 2013) and I'll keep it until it is a year out of macOS updates, then sell it. It's done pro-level photo and video editing, still plays Starcraft etc just fine, and is a great dev machine. I just repaired a 2009 iMac (hard drive failure), and it's also still supported by the latest macOS. Just got a 4 year old iPad repaired for $A90. It's stuck on iOS 9, and slow for web browsing, but still works fine as a PDF reader, note taker, and a few games for the kids. I can see a day coming where the same will be true of phones. But I get new iPhones now: to play with the newest tech, it's my primary camera for documenting family life. The "newest hardware" in iOS devices is supporting stuff like running neural net image recognition over entire photo libraries, doing 4K video capture and editing, and of course running whatever latest web monstrosity is out. People who don't want those features are fine to stick with older phones; I know quite a few family members still on iPhones 4S and 5.