[kenrikm]

Because they are trying to nudge you into upgrading. Lets face it, the fact that Apple ruthlessly kills hardware after 3-4 years is both a benefit to Apple (sells more hardware) and developers (don't have to support old versions of the OS). Though, as a consumer sometimes it makes it difficult to know if you're buying a dud (iPod Touch 4th gen) vs something that'll have a long happy life (iPad 2nd Gen)

[tokenrove]

It's awful for consumers, though. And for developers, it's not great, either, because you end up having to support a customer on an old version of OS X, for example, which means keeping a suitably old environment around just so you can keep your builds compatible, or jump through all kinds of hoops.

I don't feel like this is a good thing to encourage in an industry that already has more than enough churn as it is.

[kenrikm]

I've never run into that issue, ~90% of our users are on iOS8 or above. With iOS you can safely support the current version and last version while only pissing off 2-3% of the customers which is exceptional compared to most platforms. I also do Android development, Don't even get me started on what a mess that is, complete opposite..