The Intel 8th gneration was introduced in 2017. So people who bought a computer in 2016 can still push it to ~9 years of service life, which is pretty good for an average Windows computer if they manage to do it. I imagine your average Windows consumer will have replaced a computer once already in that span once all the installed crap has stalled the computer to inoperable speeds.
This honestly doesn't really strike me as a major issue. Especially since smartphones have like less than three years of security fixes on average.
New Thinkpads in 2017 (T470/X270/etc.) were still using 7th generation Intel chips, so it is for some users a forced update after eight years.
That said, people have hacked the leaked OEM version of Windows 11 to install on to 2010 or 2011 vintage computers, so there’s a reasonable chance Microsoft will not make 2018 era computers a hard cutoff for Windows 11 installs. Even if they do, there will probably be workarounds around allowing it to be installed it on Kaby Lake and older CPUs; we know right now Windows 11 will install on an older computer without significant issue (with some hacking, depending on just how old the computer is).
For the record, I find the three year lifecycle for Android phones very annoying. I may have my next phone be an iPhone (they can have 5-6 year support lifetimes, if I get a brand new model when it comes out) or hope the Fairphone becomes available in the US.
>This honestly doesn't really strike me as a major issue.
You're saying this from a position of privilege. There are a lot of people that don't enjoy the same financial security that you and I do that will be affected immensely by this. I know a few and this is not news in their favor.
Working in PC repair, a majority of my customers can't just up and buy a new PC just because Microsoft arbitrarily decides that whatever they have isn't good enough, even though it has sufficient performance.
