QUOTE
from this perspective there is little or no financial raisin to continue to support their loyal customers still using PPC machines.
While I feel your pain and agree with what
sandbox says just above this, isn't what you are saying somewhat contradictory? If 'customers' were truly 'loyal' they would be buying the new equipment, not hanging on to the equipment that Apple (and most developers) has
announced they will not continue to support. I'm not sure 'loyalty' is the best term to use when discussing relationships between people and fairly quickly 'upgraded' hardware. It just may be that the sped of computer 'upgrading' has surpassed the normal lifespan of those same machines. So what are the choices for a company? Used cheaper, more likely to fail quicker components? Or simply 'improve' the software so it needs (or takes advantage of) only the newest hardware? I think Apple is doing more of the latter than the former.
But they are also trying to expand their hardware/cloudware choices. Man-hours to support older hardware simply can't be justified when new markets are being sought/built. 'Justified,' of course, is defined by Apple. And it seems to mean a gross profit margin of nearly 30%. A lot of that goes into the march forward, of course. But a lot also seems to be going into bank accounts for who knows what purpose.
I still think
SB and others pretty much hit the 'head of the nail' with the thought that the hardware/software you have need not be replaced until you can no longer do what you want or need to do. But you should then expect to pay for what others have already paid for while you used what you had and they didn't. You probably won't pay any more than they did and you might even end up with a newer, faster and more capable machine than many of them!
Bottom line, enjoy what you can afford or have and don't complain that it may not be supported for as long as you use it. Life is too short to worry about what we don't have! And
many things are more important than the computers we use.