Gede: The people complaining makes me believe there is a market for hardware that supports the older versions of Windows. We'll see if that maintains in 18 months, but it seems people are not eager to change their OS.
There might be a market, but at the same time this market is demanding newer hardware and newer hardware, while still being held back by their outdated software. At some point, hardware developers have to jump to the newer hardware that utilizes updated software in order to satisfy these demands.
Isn't that like asking people "why to you continue to play Fallout 2 when Fallout 3 is out and is in 3D?" People don't always want or need the new features. I just want a new laptop to replace my old one that broke. I liked my old laptop! Why do I have to now choose between Windows 7 and having WiFi?
You're comparing with games, which is a bad analogy to say for me. But we'll suppose that games stop being on sale after a period of time for the time being. You can receive all the updates and all the [s]buginess[/s] greatness of Fallout 3, but if you want Fallout 2, you have to find somewhere to buy it, and even then you're cut from support because you're using an outdated OS. You could surely enough download and install Windows 2000 today on your high end PC, however, good luck finding drivers to use it everyday for your modern hardware. Not to mention that pre-built PCs of many kinds already come with the latest software which is probably how any Windows OS gets a bigger market share over time, diminishing the market share of those outdated OSes.
You can say "that is software, and it is different!". Well, CPUs made in 2016 still run 16-bit code, don't they? That is not an "one-time effort" like writing drivers. That costs them silicone in each processor they make.
We rarely see revolutionary new hardware. That means that drivers do not have to be written from scratch.
I don't really know of that implication. But who knows if this time, the hardware will be revolutionary, and thus, security updates for Windows 7 and 8.1 on these systems should be halted to not break them?
It was a business decision. We don't know what went into it, but we are not very pleased about it. Me? I'm used to doing research before investing money into hardware and not having shinny new things.
I feel its not. If it were a business decision, more processor lines would be affected, and even then the line that got discounted won't even receive the occasional most critical update, as the text implies. But whether its actually a business decision or a technical decision is up to debate...