Yes, I agree - I think their approach is perfectly practical.

A four-year-old laptop (2014) doesn't feel wildly different from a current one. An eight-year-old laptop (2010) is a somewhat different proposition: you're 64-bit if you're lucky, but even with a decent CPU you'll have a low-resolution screen and relatively little RAM. A twelve-year-old laptop (2006) will be painfully slow now.

The part I do find problematic is that the latest macOS is dropping support for machines that are otherwise very usable by this scale. Support back to mid-2012 sounds pretty good, except that mid-2012 Macs are still fine hardware.