I get the ideology behind supporting as much of the (old) hardware as possible, but I actually tend to agree with Steve that this is not the way you want to go when trying to achieve a decent user experience.
What I have noticed when using Linux--and I have tried several times in the last decade or so, being truly interested in trying something new--is that the experience is far from as smooth as the experience you get in both OS X and Windows. I've used Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint, and some other distro's that I forgot about. All of them had this issue, with several different kinds of hardware. And not to mention the small bugs and annoyances, things not working as they should. Not having graphics support for the video card you are using. Your wireless just not working properly, as in: not willing to connect with all networks that you used to be able to connect with on Windows, and losing connection every few minutes.
These are just two of the little things that really annoyed me when using Linux. Now, I can definitely say about myself that I'm quite at home in the computer world, as I've studied IT for a while, and have simply always been passionately interested in anything technology related.
Some of the issues I had with Linux, I was able to fix. Sure. But seeing my background, and adding up to that the fact that some issues might have possibly been solvable but so time consuming I actually longed for Windows, I think gives you a sense of the issue that Linux has. Linux will never be great, because it doesn't speak to the masses. Linux requires people with a lot of patience, and either a lot of knowledge themselves, or at least having someone around with the knowledge and spare time to invest into getting the system to work properly _always_. Windows has similar issues, but of course it has had a huge market share since day 1, and thus a lot of support from both other manufacturers and programmers as well as knowledgable people in the general public. They have also really gone forward with Windows Update, integrating updates for many of your hardware components, so the user doesn't have to search for drivers himself (and these drivers actually do their jobs pretty decently, in contrast to some Linux drivers). Also I think that we have seen a tremendous narrowing in the amount of different chips being used by different manufacturers, which of course boils down to less different kinds of hardware and thus greater chance of decent support.
Another important point against this whole 'we want to support as much hardware as we can' is that I don't really think that much people long for this. It's not necessarily a capitalism thing; but I do think that people actually like to chance it up every few years. Heck, I've probably never had a computer for longer than 1,5 years. Not because I needed it, but definitely not because I'm a mindless zombie just eating away at everything Apple or any other manufacturer throws at me either. People just like new stuff, they like the magic that comes with new stuff (especially new Apple stuff
), they like the new greater speed of it, they maybe only really like the design of it. So what? I've seen people pay millions for supposedly great Van Gogh paintings. I might like them, but I would never ever, even if I had the money, pay such an amount for a friggin' painting. Some people do. It's not all about rationalism, it's about emotional beings living in a dynamic world that is constantly changing, and they are changing with it. Call it the age of abundance, I don't really care for those flashy tag lines, but it's not about being rational, structured, dull and careful anymore, and I think Apple was a bit ahead of the curve--their greatest time still to come.