Does “support” really matter? My 2020 iMac still performs great, although I use Sequoia on it instead of Tahoe. It also runs Windows or Linux very well and was easy to upgrade to 128GB RAM.
My 2015 iMac is 11 years old and still works fine - I use it to run Windows 10 for the occasional thing that needs that and to test builds of software in High Sierra. It also runs Linux great.
It does, because everyone and their dog started releasing software that only runs on the latest version of macos. So if you are not running the latest macos, you can't use the latest software version.
For example, I used Sketch on my ond mac once and was quite happy, but then they dropped support for the OS version that mac was stuck upon. And since newer libraries resources etc all target latest version of Sketch, the version of Sketch I could run quickly became useless.
The worst is when an application updates itself just so it can stop running and tell you to upgrade to the latest OS version.
Hyperbole. Almost no software on macOS requires the latest.
However, it's great that developers are not too concerned with backwards compatibility. It was really holding back a lot of software
I told you a true story about my experience and you call it 'hyperbole'. Well, ok if it suits you.
On your second point, proper developers release security updates and backports for software released decades ago, while others always chase new shiny things and contribute a lot to this unsupportable legacy hell that we have to deal with.
The difference being that the M-series machines do not have good prospects in terms of running Linux well. As I would personally not want to run Windows for sure, this matters a lot.
It has better prospects of being able to run Linux than it does of being able to run Windows, to be fair
Why would that be? You're stuck on drivers either way and ARM Windows runs just fine virtualized.
Asahi Linux exists for ARM Linux and has Windows has no equivalent (since it’s closed source and Microsoft doesn’t want to support that). Linux also runs virtualized, that’s obviously irrelevant because daily driving a VM isn’t a great idea.
Old M series runs Linux well.
Trying using a Mac on which you cannot install latest Firefox and see how your statement holds.
That's one thing Windows is generally much better at.
Firefox runs fine on High Sierra.
It matters because AI is finding more security vulnerabilities than ever.
I was happy but all of a sudden my VPN refuses to release versions for Sonoma