The reason extremely old iOS devices (not just iPads) are not receiving OS support any longer is because iOS 11 switched to 64-bit architecture (dropping 32-bit

The reason extremely old iOS devices (not just iPads) are not receiving OS support any longer is because iOS 11 switched to 64-bit architecture (dropping 32-bit support) and all apps written going forward will be compiled for 64 bit processor architectures. Apple is industry leading in terms of software support for their hardware. Which other manufacturer provides OS updates for 4+ years? Certainly not any of the Android OEMs. It's not as black and white as "it's supported" or "it's not supported". There's a lot of context around certain decisions that gets filtered out of articles like the one you're referring to.