I think that's fair. Big Sur support is limited to 2014 iMacs and later, which is a shame because my late 2012 iMac is absolutely fine for home and business use still.

Intel released Haswell in 2013. Big Sur probably requires features introduced with it, such as AVX2, new low power states, increased GPU execution units, etc.

Apple wants to meet environmental aims and paint themselves green - something I fully support for that matter - and they have at least for consumers the expectation of quality and craftsmanship, not "crap that's obsolete in two years".

Windows has a different reason why they're so focused on desktop BC: lock-in. Had Windows not taken care of BC over decades and a provable track record of that from the beginning of the DOS era, enterprises with tens of thousands of licenses would have fled the ship (and funded WINE with ludicrous amounts of money, probably). On mobile they didn't give a flying finger about BC, and the contrast was noticeable.

>On mobile they didn't give a flying finger about BC, and the contrast was noticeable.

Yep, a fatal mistake, made by leadership brought in from outside Windows. Pretty much wrote the epitaph for Windows with that move.

signed: bitter Windows Phone user.

It was that way even at the Windows CE times. Truly a shame, MS and Blackberry essentially owned that market, and they let it slip away. Now both are fucked in that space.