>There's got to be some compromise, coz it sounds like if you buy into Apple then you're SOL if they can't be bothered supporting your hardware.
I think part of the idea is (and how they see it), if you buy into Apple, you should have enough spare money to upgrade your hardware as needed. This sucks for us which are not exactly affluent, but that's part of the thing. Apple never tried to maximize affordability or expenses.
(Though in some cases, they have been the more affordable of the bunch, e.g. when the iPad was announced, it took about 2 years for competitive machines to reach price parity. Or now, e.g. the newly announced MS earbuds are more expensive than airpods).
It's not a platform for long term support and maximum bang for the buck, it's a platform for user convenience ("it just works, mostly"), inter-operation ("things -phone, earbuds, speaker, watch, etc- just work together, mostly"), and cohesiveness ("things have a unified vision, mostly"), plus polish (thinking some things more through in their design -- not always though, e.g. BS MBPr keyboard).
I use "mostly" above in the sense that it's not obviously perfect (and some areas far from it). But the tradeoff is in the areas mentioned above.
I think part of the idea is (and how they see it), if you buy into Apple, you should have enough spare money to upgrade your hardware as needed. This sucks for us which are not exactly affluent, but that's part of the thing. Apple never tried to maximize affordability or expenses.
(Though in some cases, they have been the more affordable of the bunch, e.g. when the iPad was announced, it took about 2 years for competitive machines to reach price parity. Or now, e.g. the newly announced MS earbuds are more expensive than airpods).
It's not a platform for long term support and maximum bang for the buck, it's a platform for user convenience ("it just works, mostly"), inter-operation ("things -phone, earbuds, speaker, watch, etc- just work together, mostly"), and cohesiveness ("things have a unified vision, mostly"), plus polish (thinking some things more through in their design -- not always though, e.g. BS MBPr keyboard).
I use "mostly" above in the sense that it's not obviously perfect (and some areas far from it). But the tradeoff is in the areas mentioned above.