Comment by ufmace 4 days ago
I don't think it's the same. On older Apple hardware, it just keeps on running on the older OS version. You don't get some new features or styling of the new OS, but nothing else changes. On Windows, it periodically brings up full-screen notifications that your hardware is obsolete and you need to upgrade, with the only options being to upgrade or "remind me again later".
Some security updates.
Note: Because of dependency on architecture and system changes to any current version of Apple operating systems (for example, macOS 26, iOS 26 and so on), not all known security issues are addressed in previous versions (for example, macOS 15, iOS 18 and so on).
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/deployment/depc4c80847...
I'm not sure why you're counting the years of support for a version of the OS and not the years of support for a computer. The interesting thing is: if you bought a computer at year X, does it still receive updates at X+Y?
There's loads of relatively young computers which can't upgrade to Windows 11 and therefore aren't supported anymore. That's the problem, not how long Windows 10 was supported.
That's great, but it's no silver bullet. We have a 4th Gen iPad that was used mostly for consumption. Only one of the streaming apps works with its ios version.
The same issues plague old Android tablets. Lots of unecessary ewaste out there so OEM's can sell new devices.
There are a lot of Android devices that look temping until one discovers how out-of-date the firmware is.
With no option to install your own, of course. Boot loaders should be exclusively for running the manufacturer's lone security update from 5 years ago.
I just installed Opencore and run the newer OSs anyway. It will eventually not be an option when they come up with an ARM-only OS, but at the moment it seems to work ok.
Software in much more tied to the OS though. For example, Chrome is still compatible with Windows 10 which is more than 10 years old, while on macOS you cannot install it past Monterey (2021). Not to mention that also system applications are updated with the OS, so forget about using Safari
They also provide security updates for those old OSes for quite a while, AFAIK.