Then why are you posting? The whole basis of this thread is Apple as a start up.
"Growing software library" it ain't.
How long should they have kept PPC or Classic support?
Microsoft is in a funny position. Backward compatibility is seen as a competitive advantage, especially in the enterprise market. However, it’s that very compatibility that makes people avoid adopting new technologies, because why bother? We see Microsoft throw so many things against the wall, and almost nothing sticks. Meanwhile, Apple tells devs to jump and they ask how high. Devs know Apple is going to cut support, so its update your apps or be left behind.
To really make a change, a person needs to be all-in. Dual booting Windows and Linux/macOS, for example. This is a sign a person isn’t all-in and they don’t really make the change, or it takes significantly longer. When a person goes all-in and burns the boats, they are forced to find new solutions and make the changes needed to make the new thing actually work.
Should they still be supporting PPC software? 68K software? Why not old Apple // software for good measure?
Right now the last time I counted in 2012, there were 12 ways to define a string in Windows and you had to convert back and forth between them depending on which API you are calling. There are so many one off hacks to keep Windows running (see Raymond Chen’s blog) it’s a house of cards
It's wild to me that after many many decades with computers people are always surprised that the current hardware gets deprecated for new hardware and then rediscover emulation again.
I’m well aware of emulation parts of PPC MacOS - including the operating system was running 68K code until OS X came out 8 years after the PPC was introduced. Intel Macs ran PPC code under emulation for a few years.
So should the ARM Mac have emulations for Intel 32 bit/64 bit, PPC and 68K?
Should the iPhone have emulators?
(I still use a Firewire audio interface with my music studio Mac -- it runs macOS 12 Monterey)