4 years is pretty old in terms of consumer supported life for a device. Heck, some hardware doesn't survive the 3 year barrier in enterprise support.
It doesn't seem very long to me anymore. Computers are pretty much out of the peak performance increase mode they were in during the late '90s to mid 2000 years. Clock speeds are more or less at their peak and not a lot of software is taking advantage of multiple cores as well as they would need to make up for the slower increase in performance. Graphic cards have a ways to go yet, but much of the gaming has moved back to consoles these days so in many cases there is simply NO NEED for a lot more more power at the consumer level. We're seeing instead big increases in the Phone/Tablet sector where there is still plenty of room for big gains.
But this idea that a 4 year old computer is out of date is ridiculous. I'm typing on a computer made in 2001 originally (with an updated CPU) and while the web is slowing down (due to needless/pointless over-the-top web pages that are so inefficient these days to make one's head spin and load like MOLASSES on my iPod Touch 4G (so yeah they should consider their code), overall, the machine is still plenty usable and it's a DINOSAUR compared to my 2008 MBP which is faster than any person would need for ordinary day-to-day activities. I run Logic Pro on it and it's still faster than I need to make any given music track (32+ tracks per song).
Most Mac users aren't gamers (the old standby reason in the past for most high-end PC owners to keep upgrading), so exactly WTF do people need a new computer for every 3-4 years??? The answer is they really don't and this is why Apple has taken to artificially giving them the old shove. How long do people keep their car? Some get a new one every 2-4 years and some keep it for a decade. If it were up to "green" Apple, they'd make the gas pumps incompatible with cars older than 4 years so they have to buy a new car to put gas in it without a siphon.
What apple is doing is yeah might be good in the short term but this tyep of stuff pisses people off and will make them want to break out of the Apple garden and say "screw you Apple."
I agree. I was waiting for the new Intel chipset upgrade to the Mac Mini to buy one as a replacement for my aging PowerMac server, but I'm starting to wonder if that's the best idea the way Apple is acting lately. I bought that PowerMac used in 2006 to use as a server and with a few small upgrades, it did a great job for 6 years as a server for my whole house system and as an Internet terminal, but it's showing its age now. But think about that. It was already 5 years old when I got it and it's just now at the point where I think it could use a replacement (lack of HD video viewing capability on the Net for one thing). But it shows the difference between Apple of the past and Apple of today. This thing often came with OS9 on it and yet I could get OS updates right up through Leopard! A lot of software no longer worked after Snow Leopard abandoned it, but I could at least keep it as a server since iTunes and browser updates were maintained for several more years).
But now we're looking at a cycle of 3-4 years to dump support (may get sooner over time for all we know) with 'major' updates to OSX now coming at an interval closer to 1 year than 2 years, which means software will likely dump support for given hardware completely within 5-6 years with at least some dumping it right at 3-4 when the new OS comes out.
Meanwhile, PCs from 2001 can still get support with XP on them and some machines from around that time can even be made to run Windows 7. At the very least, one buying a PC today can be nearly certain that their computer will have OS and software support for at least 8-10 years. Whether they need it that long is another matter, but you can at least be sure that if the hardware is still useful to you, so will the software.
I don't like Windows that much. I never did. But I can't ignore the fact the value per dollar for OSX machines is getting worse and the hardware was always a premium to begin with. If you pay 2x as much for your computer, the last thing you want to see is that it will be useful for 1/2 as long. That equates to a 400% premium. Yeah, is it worth that much? Windows7 really isn't a bad operating system at this point (like crashy '98 or problematic Vista) and features are close to parity for the most part these days (although Windows still runs circles around OSX for gaming throughput both in terms of driver support and keeping DirectX up-to-date; Apple can't even get OpenGL up-to-date. They're always like 4 versions behind and that doesn't seem to be changing. I haven't heard a peep about improvements in that area with all these new Lion and Mountain Lion updates.) Frankly, I'm going to have to seriously reconsider whether my next major computer is even going to run OSX. The lack of malware still has a strong draw to me, but then I've never actually acquired any major malware on my XP or '98 box before that so maybe it's more overblown worry than actual danger for my uses.
