This isn't even just an Apple attitude. The whole macOS and iOS software ecosystem has this "nothing before the prior two OS releases exists anymore" attitude, and it is absolutely infuriating. It is absolutely possible and not a huge lift to support prior operating systems, but Mac developers just don't tend to care or do it.
The reasonable way to go about hardware deprecation is to not do it until that hardware is Truly Gone™, buy some actual definition of Gone that isn't an arbitrary number of years or versions.
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This isn't even just an Apple attitude. The whole macOS and iOS software ecosystem has this "nothing before the prior two OS releases exists anymore" attitude, and it is absolutely infuriating. It is absolutely possible and not a huge lift to support prior operating systems, but Mac developers just don't tend to care or do it.
The reasonable way to go about hardware deprecation is to not do it until that hardware is Truly Gone™, buy some actual definition of Gone that isn't an arbitrary number of years or versions.