Hardware partners? They probably love Apple. They get to sell everyone a new Iphone every couple of years. Planned obsolescence?
Also, it gets expensive having to buy a new $500 Iphone, Ipad and whatever every couple of years.
I will remember this the next time I am due to upgrade my smart phone. So far we have been using Android and our phones are three years old. They'll probably die before they become obsolete.
Crossing my fingers. Knocking on wood.
The ones that are dying because Microsoft hasn't come out with a truly great, compelling operating system in a decade other than Windows 7, and arguably that is still being upstaged by the un-dead, Refuses-To-Die WinXP.
I applaud Microsoft for supporting XP that long. They had every right to kill support a long time ago if they wanted to. But they were forced to yield to the marketplace of users and businesses who demanded continued support.
Unfortunately, they didn't come out with anything (other than Win7) that could hold a candle to XP for simple usefulness.
And their hardware partners are dead, dead, dead. They were subsisting on tiny margins because of the race-to-the-bottom of PC hardware prices, and then the combination of Vista and Win8, at the same time Apple was bringing out the iPhone/iPad family, dropped the bottom out entirely.
And then Microsoft comes out with Surface. Geez, it's a wonder that the PC hardware makers didn't burn Redmond to the ground.
Why do you have to upgrade? I have a first generation iPad and it still works just fine. I have some 10 year old Macs that still run just fine, however if I want to move to 4K those older machines just won't handle that, but I don't have to move to 4K.