Yup my dad bought an iMac back in 2014. It was that one model that didn't support targeted display mode. It broke about a month back (looks like drive failure)

Yup my dad bought an iMac back in 2014. It was that one model that didn't support targeted display mode. It broke about a month back (looks like drive failure) but had been having tons of issues before this due to newer software dropping support. He should be able to just buy a cheap mac mini second hand and plug it into that gorgious 5k imac display, but nope. Cant do that. Apple just like every other company could not give less of a crap about ewaste. There is absolutely zero reason why they couldn't relax the limits on older hardware to allow it to be repurposed. What's now going to happen in my dads case is he'll buy a cheap 4k monitor, probably a second hand mac mini and send the iMac to a charity for recycling. The whole Intel -> ARM thing though was absolutely about performance and Intel's utterly awful processors holding them back. The forced upgrades were just a bonus for Apple.