Why isn't XP good enough to run a map kiosk in a mall? Or flight arrivals screen in the airport?
Face it, the needs of many single-use applications where solved decades ago...the need to constantly undergo the endless forced upgrade cycle waste a tremendous amount of human effort.
It is and the stripped-down versions of XP Microsoft sells to run kiosks still get updates [1]
> Windows Embedded Standard 2009. This product is an updated release of the toolkit and componentized version of Windows XP. It was originally released in 2008, and Extended Support will end on January 8, 2019.
> Windows Embedded POSReady 2009. This product for point of sale devices reflects the updates available in Windows Embedded Standard 2009. It was originally released on 2009, and extended support will end on April 9, 2019.
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/18581/lifecycle-faq...
However, MS makes it very difficult to acquire and manage those products. Generally speaking, you must buy their embedded products with a motherboard/cpu purchase from an authorized vendor.
MS business strategy basically mandates that a whole class of "single purpose" customers can't / won't buy via the way MS wants to sell it.
If you try to mandate that the mall buy your special (expensive) motherboard/XPe combo you will generally make no sales. Therefore the default becomes that your customers just go buy "whatever computer they can that matches specs" and run that. Hence you wind up with tens of millions of devices that aren't supported anymore.