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"last forever" is an overstatement, the lastest macOS only supports device until 2017: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213264 ; That is only 6 years old, that is around the phone support period around a later pixel phone, which is not even a company that focus on sustainability.
Although you can probably throw linux on it to extend its life, but I dont know if it is as easy as install it on a normal laptop.
I am confused, it seems like two of macOS's competitor: windows and linux, all have much longer support period than apple.
I am using a surface laptop 2 which is almost 5 years old, and given that there is no major version of windows planned, it is hard to imagine that it will become unsupported in 2 years.
Granted many people unnecessarily update their hardware, simply because "new one is better", which is honestly a quiet disappointing trend for me. From my personal experience, apple product buyer seems to have a higher tendency to engage in this trend, for reason unclear to me.
On Intel Macs, Linux is pretty easy to install. A lot of people put a lot of work into having most Macs just work out of the box on Linux.
On Apple Silicon, most of that work is still unfinished. Asahi Linux is the main project to get Linux on M1/M2, and the goal is to upstream everything, but it's a long road.
Either way, the sheer popularity of Macs basically guarantees a usable experience on Linux. It's just going to take a bit for Apple Silicon to catch up.
Also, I think "last forever" with Macs is more about the hardware itself. It's hard to deny the build quality is really good (except the keyboard from 2016-2020 on MBPs), and I've seen people using 2011 MBAs stuck on Catalina as their daily drivers because the hardware just keeps working.
Point of clarification, that's only for upgrading the OS, not for security patches. Those go back further, with a recent example covering 10-year-old models.