But do you pull kernel updates automatically, unattended? Because Windows feature updates are like that - every now and then they may market them up, including popping up some notification in the system, but otherwise they just get installed automatically over time. If they started dropping compatibility with older CPUs and software with subsequent updates, they could find themselves in the middle of a huge PR mess when one of their automated updates suddenly breaks a chunk of some industry. Makes more sense to create a version boundary if the changes are really as extreme as GP described, preventing large amounts of users from sleep-walking into a disaster.