Apple has been very aggressive with obsoleting older devices, because selling newer devices is where they make their bread and butter. Some of their "this is not supported" features are rather puzzling, given they are usually tested fully on the very hardware being sunset (Siri ran well on the iPhone 4).
* I'm still not sure why my wife's white MacBook can install Lion but not Mountain Lion. Something something about video cards. Really? I thought you could have more than one set of video drivers. Who knew. Not much of a loss since we are sticking with Snow Leopard anyway since I despise the UI direction taken with Lion and the lack of Rosetta, but really, such a lame reason to require you to upgrade hardware.
* My son's 2nd gen iPod Touch can only run iOS 4.2.1 but not iOS 4.3, so no Airprint and no support for many apps that used to run on it that now have a cutoff at iOS 4.3. Was there really such a giant increase in required HW support between 4.2 and 4.3? Lame. So like Google search, my son is forced to use a third-party print solutionvia HP ePrint -- yeah it can be done, just not by Apple. HP sells printers, not new iPod Touches, so we gave our money to HP.
* My wife's Verizon iPhone 4 was only 6 months old (we got a release model) before Apple stated Siri wouldn't run on it. And yet, the iPhone 4 was tested on the 4 and there were hacks that showed it was pretty good on the 4 despite improved mics on the 4s. My iPad 2 was not much older either, and somehow didn't make the grade. Lame, and greedy.
Google has found an awesome in-road for iOS: Support those devices Apple won't. Google sells ads, not devices. They don't need to make up reasons---at best partial truths---why feature X won't run on the last gen hardware. They can make money where Apple can't. Bring it on, Google!
So, thank you Google, from all of us Apple fanbois whom have mortgages and families and can't afford to upgrade HW every single year just so that Apple can build more spaceship buildings.
