Does this really apply?
My gf and I each earn FANG salaries and could upgrade a,couple of times a year if we were so inclined but haven’t bothered until the M1 arrived. IPhone 6s & 7, watch 0 & 3, 2016 Macbook + 2017 MacBook Air (TBF she has a big 2019 Intel MBP from work though)...upgrading that old gear didn’t seem worth it. Patches and upgrades continued to arrive (except for the watch 0).
But we finally upgraded everything and now I’ll upgrade my 2014 ipad that I’m typing on now.
I doubt most people upgrade simply because something new has arrived. Apple doesn’t really drive you to it.
Whilst you can run Intel code via Rosetta indefinitely(), Apple's strategic position is no more Intel hardware.
I'm typing this on a 2013 MBP. I'm personally waiting for an M2 chip, which I expect will follow Moore's law, albeit for ARM. Which backs up your point.
() indefinitely as defined by Apple is until they change their mind.
Apple is carrot and stick, where the carrot is performance and the stick is obsolescence.
With Windows, there's neither carrot or stick. ARM isn't that much more performant, the battery life isn't that much better, and they're certainly not abandoning Intel.
OTOH, Microsoft could invest a huge amount of their money on making ARM attractive, but the Wintel ties clearly run deep.