Excepting of Windows 11 (which even then you could just do registry edits), Windows will install on older computers. Linux sits in the same boat. Apple on the other hand has a tight lock on their software, and drivers, and arbitrarily decide "this hardware is too out of date" even though if you fuss around with it, you can get a newer version of MacOS running just fine.

This is less applicable now what with Apple's transition to ARM, but it's something I worry about down the line. How fast will your OS be out of date on the first generation M1s? In a year or two?

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I still think you're making unfair comparisons here. It's more effort to get MacOS installed on unsupported hardware than Windows, but just because it installs doesn't mean it's supported. Just because a few registry hacks can get Windows 11 on an old machine doesn't mean a future windows update won't suddenly break it (I mean they break even supported configurations from time to time). I get what you're saying, Apple do sure go out of their way to prevent it, but even if Windows let you install it, an unsupported configuration is still by definition out of support and it can just stop working at any time without much recourse.