Moore's law was about the technology -- but I am talking about the application of the technology. It was unusual for most businesses to base their purchasing / refreshing decisions around the idea that the technology would be good for 2-3 Moore's law cycles. This was especially true back in the days of Mainframes and later "Mini" computers (shrunk down versions of Mainframes -- not Mini PC's) where companies like DEC and IBM went to great lengths to ensure that upgrading to a newer system didn't impact other operations in a business.

Most of this carried on with Vax and Unix Systems (like Sun workstations, SGI, etc.) in the same lifecycle.

When PC's started coming into the business world, the thought was that they would fit that same lifecycle -- and many of them did. This set the mark for early PC's when IBM brought them to the consumer market. The IBM PC was, after all, the consumer version of a business computer.

Apple, Commodore, TI, Atari, et al. were a bit different -- coming at things more from the entertainment, education, and hobby side of things.

I see what Steve is doing here is attempting to push things back towards the business lifecycle, and with good reason: it's better for the planet if fewer machines are abandoned due to the arbitrary whims of some marketer's concept of profitability.