Heathrow Harry hit the nail on the head with his post on 14 April 2014 in page 2 of the thread below.
Quote: “Most users who are sticking with XP like it, they don't need anything "enhanced" and they don't want to waste all the time and money involved in "upgrading" to what are less useful products many of which are really aimed at phones, tablets etc.”
Many of these so-called upgrades are useless to users. These needless pseudo-upgrades are nothing more than a work-creation project by some nerd to demonstrate what a clever little geek he is regardless of the trouble and obstruction caused to users at large.
New features are not needed. Just ensure that existing features continue to operate reliably and securely. This means nothing more is needed than an occasional security patch!
When a weakness comes to light the obligation on the company is to correct that weakness, not to try to leverage it with some unwanted pseudo-upgrades. Note that Apple has only secured some of its products. Those who for one reason or another do not use the very latest version of OSX have apparently been abandoned.
eg When an airbag problem came to light a couple of years ago we were advised that the airbags in our 2008 model Toyota would need to be changed under a recall. That is all that happened. Toyota did not behave like some unscrupulous computer/OS supplier (Apple) and try to force us to also have the engine replaced with the turbocharged and more powerful version. We still have the atmospheric version that gives all the performance we need. Toyota did not weasel out of its obligation to owners of older vehicles and advise that it would only provide a remedy to those who owned cars made in the past couple of years. Toyota faced up to its obligation to ensure that the airbags would perform as intended when we bought the car new in 2007. Apple and other IT companies need to display the same level of integrity and customer service. Apple should provide security updates to all versions of OSX released in the previous twelve years!
Effective government competition and business standards agencies should enforce this. Also, are there any class action law suits available to help users of older versions of OSX?
Should we laugh or cry? Government pays Microsoft £5.5m to extend Windows XP support