I kind of understand the author's point, but at the same time, there comes a time when any kind of technology becomes obsolete. I still use my 2012 Nexus 7 - aw

I kind of understand the author's point, but at the same time, there comes a time when any kind of technology becomes obsolete. I still use my 2012 Nexus 7 - awesome tablet when it was released, and it was an entry-level model even then, so to have eeked 6 years of life out of it is pretty impressive. I know the OS is no longer maintained and it's stuck on Android 5.0; this is the price you pay for embedded systems. You own the hardware, but have zero claim over the software that runs on it. I still have up-to-date Firefox, for the time being, but I know at some point I'll lose that and more, and my device will be unsafe to connect to the internet. In much the same way you wouldn't try to play 4k video on a computer made in 1995, at some point the device's processing power maxes out. It's difficult to strike the balance between power, battery life and cost; Apple like to play the Rolls-Royce card of 'it's enough for you' in this regard, giving you a bit of room to expand in the future, but it's in no company's benefit to make your device last forever. With a device that cannot be upgraded, the best approach for them is to sell you another one. I think the field of computing is particularly skewed by Linux, how most hacker-types will dig through their box of parts every so often, slap together enough components to build an old-generation system and install Ubuntu on it and voila, a second (third, fourth, tenth) lease on life for an old machine. And that's mostly true; Linux doesn't much care what it's running on, the OS can be adapted to run on anything. But at the same time, the applications running thereon will quickly prove why the hardware is previous-generation; sure, you might get the latest Ubuntu running, but what then? Add Chrome and a few tabs and it's going to start to creak; a few things running in the background and eventually you'll give up. Embedded devices are much the same; at some point, you will reach the limits of the hardware through no fault of your own. It's questionable how much by-design this is, with Apple admitting they silently force the CPU clock down as the battery ages, but even with fresh batteries, application developers will be taking advantage of newer hardware features that don't work efficiently or at all in previous models. Some of it may be progress for progress' sake, but try running a machine with full-disk encryption on a Core 2 Duo, without the AES engine - the new hardware makes a lot of difference. It is a shame that the device doesn't visually age and when powered off has no indication of its age, but such is the way of the industry; it isn't Apple's way to make devices that last longer than their release cycle, and few companies have ever made much profit that way.