One thing that has changed: we routinely see hardware outliving software these days (e.g. Android phones that would still be perfectly adequate if software upda

One thing that has changed: we routinely see hardware outliving software these days (e.g. Android phones that would still be perfectly adequate if software updates were available), this was hardly imaginable in the days of the "Itanic". Back then new hardware was typically bought to run old software faster. Also, jit runtimes, once you have a hardware specific build of your browser (or of your server stack) you are 90% there.