There's always that "hurt" with each transition. I guess some reasonable timeframes would be involved, but who determines that? People with 2019-2020 Intel Macs might grouse, but who knows. May not even be important, super-cool features.
There are no Intel-based Macs in my future (I don't need anything they provide), so it won't affect me, but yeah...people will probably squawk a little, especially if it is a cool, important feature
and they have a fairly recent Intel-based Mac.
If they're got a 2009 MacBook Air or something, they can go climb a rope...I don't wanna hear it.
I think Apple is pretty generous on this front. My cheap, no-buying ass is running iOS 14.6 on a five-plus-year-old iPhone SE, and I could be running Catalina if I wanted (can't install Big Sur on this 2013 MacBook Pro, but I'm also not upset about it either). If I had a 2019 MacBook Pro, then yeah. But for someone who tends to keep their stuff 2-4x longer than anyone in my orbit, I'm always able to run the latest iOS and almost the latest macOS.
Not bad at all. I don't expect Apple to "honor"/support my 8-12 year old Macs...that's on me to maybe buy something every 5-6 years.
We've all heard the stories/situations on the other side, though.