Again, you must be running with a different crowd than I am. Even my technically-minded friends, while not incensed when discussing this subject, don't feel it's a big problem. They usually want the faster processor or better graphics in a few years anyway. I do have a couple of friends who like to make their tech buys last as long as possible, and it's that type of personality that cares about this, by and large. It's been my experience that the general population gets it, but has bigger things to worry about.
Those of us with mortgages & kids have to keep budgets, etc... Apple maintains a 5 year cycle on supporting products. Let's put a figure on it:
Apple laptop $1500
Apple Desktop $1200
iPad $600
iPhone $130 (contract) *2 (3yr cycle)
I freely admit I pulled these numbers out of my head. The desktop & laptops figures are amalgams of the product lines, and the iPad & iPhone include some accessories you ALWAYS end up walking out of the store with. Screen protectors, cases, etc...
Total: $3560 / 5 years... $712/yr to live the Apple life. Those 5 year update/support cycles and the corresponding lack of freedom they include become remarkably sharply defined after you've lived thru a few of them. My wife and I love Apple products, and they do tend to last, but we're getting ready to leave the orchard, at least for desktop/laptops. The coupling between expensive closed phones/tablets and "partially closed and getting worse rapidly" desktops/laptops is simply too expensive. I can sync my phone/pad to Windows running in a VBox VM on Linux.
