Apple do seem to love rendering their expensive hardware useless after a few years.
I certainly get your meaning, but that doesn't sound like Apple's fault. Could they have made it backwards compatible? Probably...but they also don't support an OS more than three versions back. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As for useless......I'm still running two 12 year old Macs that were purchased new. The iMac is on its second hard drive and requires a video card swap to update beyond High Sierra. Doable, but not for the faint hearted. The Air went to Monterey without issue. It runs a little hot, but loading a 2 year old OS onto a 12 year old machine? I'm surprised it runs at all.
In comparison, Windows machines tend to not age well.