> came with some pretty severe restrictions on supported hardware
That's hardware, and just like with the Linux kernel you have some tough choices to make about what you continue to support. Apple rendered my Intel Mac Mini a brick because despite having a 64 bit CPU its BIOS/UEFI or whatever was 32 bit and I was stuck with MacOS 10.6, no way to upgrade to 10.7 Lion.
That's hardware, and just like with the Linux kernel you have some tough choices to make about what you continue to support. Apple rendered my Intel Mac Mini a brick because despite having a 64 bit CPU its BIOS/UEFI or whatever was 32 bit and I was stuck with MacOS 10.6, no way to upgrade to 10.7 Lion.