>Intel's Atom Clover Trail series CPUs
https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/16/10780876/microsoft-window...
We may need at least another data point, but it does look to me that Microsoft has gotten much more aggressive about dropping support for older hardware. It probably a result of Nadella's cut of the Q&A team. If the Q&A team is cut, it makes sense that less hardware would be support, and that you'll also see more bugs in the operating system.
> Despite being Microsoft’s newest and ‘most secure’ operating system, Windows 10 was found to have the highest proportion of vulnerabilities of any OS (395), 46% more than Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 (265 each).
https://www.avecto.com/news-and-events/news/94-of-critical-m...
It sounds to me like all of those anti-exploit mitigations that are supposed to come to Windows 10 will be needed just to make it as "secure" as previous versions.
Also, an update to the OS to make it compatible could potentially be sufficiently high-impact that it could break user applications, existing hardware functionality, or other potential concerns.