The hardware is not really stabilizing, if anything the rate of change in CPU and GPU has been accelerating. Those two things are probably the largest contribut

The hardware is not really stabilizing, if anything the rate of change in CPU and GPU has been accelerating. Those two things are probably the largest contributers to the treadmill of obsolescence. Apple has tried to keep the connectors standard, but Lightning will eventually go away. But since they have not moved to USB-C yet (on the iPad side), there is a chance that they will skip that and we will have Lightning until the next major change (probably to USB).