1. We’re talking about hardware vendors 2. Why is the tech industry magically different from everything else? I get safety recalls on things which are 5-10 years old but e.g. Lenovo can’t seem to ship Android security updates which Google gave them more than 1-2 years after release.

> Sadly, on Apple platforms there is no way of doing paid upgrades so there goes that.

This is why developers use advertising, in-app purchases and subscriptions, or releasing major versions as new apps.

The point wasn’t that the status quo is perfect but that it’s extremely wasteful and needs to change. The tech industry has a lot of people who thought that cycle of rapid growth was innate but are starting to realize that things are saturating in most segments. Buying a new device every 2 years only works if they’re very cheap or dramatically better.

From the standpoint of hardware I definitely agree that it should not be made with a 2-3 year lifespan in mind, especially because of the toll it takes on the environment.

> This is why developers use advertising, in-app purchases and subscriptions, or releasing major versions as new apps.

None of these are a good replacement because they do not solve the problem. If you wish to have an old version of the app available for users which did not update the only option is releasing a new app but then you can not give a discount to old clients. In app purchases and subscriptions pull everybody into the release cycle.

The current status quo is not good but from the software perspective I do not know how it could change. The prices were pulled down so far that supporting old platforms is not sustainable, unless you are one of those companies which get their money somewhere else.