[Fragoel2]

Seems to me that this piece comes directly from Magical Christmasland, never taking into account the fact that companies are entities that operate for a profit. Why would they spend resources on maintaining old software when they can just cobble together something that (despite being full of flaws) works well enough that most customers will never complain about?

"[...] consumers would, I suspect, be willing to pay a few dollars more for a gadget if that meant reliable access to software for it—indefinitely"

Even if customers would be fine with it, I doubt it would work. Not only maintaining multiple pieces of decades-old software is extremely complicated in practice but, mostly, why bother? Instead, companies are more than happy to focus on selling you a shiny new toy every few years. This way they have greater profit margins and the vast majority of customers are totally fine with it.