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I didn't see it pointed out explicitly in the article but it seems that the last major architecture change hurt lifespan for both the old architecture (at some

I didn't see it pointed out explicitly in the article but it seems that the last major architecture change hurt lifespan for both the old architecture (at some point updates stopped for all old-arch machines) but also for the first few generations of the newer architecture (presumable the hardware was changing quicker so it was harder to keep compatibility). I find it interesting that the primary factor seems to be if it was easy to maintain support. IIUC there is no public promise of software support lifetime. I wonder if there is an internal minimum, then they continue supporting as long as it is easy to do so?

goosedragons 3y ago
I think part of that was early Intel machines were also 32 bit or 32 bit EFI machines.
- fy20 3y ago
  Yes, the first generation Intel Macs had a 32bit CPU. I bought the original Intel MacBook in 2006, and the last OS update was in 2011 so that wasn't bad. By that time it was already pretty slow due to the limited CPU and memory. That was much longer than you'd expect the Windows equivalent laptop from 2006 to last. The Core 2 architecture with 64bit support was released in late 2006, and the MacBook updated the same year - less than 6 months after release of the first, so two architectural changes in one year! It's strange Apple didn't just hold off from the initial release for a while.