Here's a list I started of just what I've found and could think of readily:
What? Never?
First of all I think old CPU instruction sets should be deprecated in finite time. Secondly I think a decade is a reasonable time frame to do it in. It too fast, not too slow.
I go my first 64-bit mac in 2006. Fourteen years later why should the Mac have to support the older slower way that doesn’t release the potential of the hardware?
I welcome a 64-bit only OS and haven’t suffered any loss from it.
But hey, I also think switch to Python 3 gave enough time to everyone to switch too and there's no shortage of people who disagree :)
Aside from that, Aperture was abandoned 5 years ago. I would blame Apple for not releasing a 64-bit version of it before dropping it, but not for dropping 32-bit altogether.
It's possible to get it running in 10.15 by removing the references to those frameworks, it breaks some of the features like slideshows but the app will still run: https://medium.com/@cormiertyshawn895/deep-dive-how-does-ret... (the author has also made an app that automates this process, I haven't tried it so I can't vouch for how well it works)
If you go to Windows and use Lightroom, why not stay on your mac?
If you go to Linux and use FSpot or Darktable, you can get them both on a Mac too.
For those of us with legacy 32bit apps and games, having them run ("slower" is in the eye of the beholder, as they perform as well as they always have) is better than not running at all.
When I run a legacy 32bit app, it's not like I'm bothered by the fact that it also loads a bunch of 32bit OS libraries. It's not like I feel like my value for money for owning the machine is restored if clicking the .app icon just shows a "Not supported" dialog box.
Aren't 32bit binaries (when not needing 64bits) slightly faster than 64bit versions due to the smaller pointer size?
This will literally NEVER happen and it makes me so sad. Apple would rather drop macOS completely then let this happen. In my opinion this is also the only reason for the T1/T2 security chips on the recent Macs. Yes I understand the other features of the T1/T2 chip (secure boot, touch id, etc) but to me these have got to be bullshit reasons. There is no reason why Apple's special little security chip should be controlling the exposure of your webcam[0].
So that would seem to be evidence against your theory that Apple is concerned about people running MacOS on generic hardware. While some cryptographic hardware would indeed be needed to reliably prevent such shenanigans, I'm somewhat certain they could sabotage such systems with minimal effort and raise the pain to levels where it's just not worth it.
They don't even bother to, say, check the CPU and refuse to run on AMD. That could probably be done in a single line of sourcecode. Not doing anything like that and instead designing custom silicone just isn't rational behaviour.
Er, yes there is. The custom image signal processor on the T2 enables the face detection feature that drives tone and white balance mapping _on_ _faces_. That requires custom silicon to do in real time. The T2 is a custom ARM chip, so I expect the image signal processor is a subsystem taken from one of the recent iPhone chips, which also have hardware enabled dynamic face detection and mapping.
The Tx chips may indeed spell the end of hackintoshes (I hope not, but who knows) but I’m sure hackintoshes played no role in any decision to use them.
Oh wait it's 2020, sorry, that's not playing anymore. What's this year's RDF spin?
(I expect the problem is that you mainly pay for the hardware, not so much the software. At some Apple found out that if the hardware is nice enough, the software can be a bit shit, and people won't mind.)
And I'm willing to admit that there have been more annoyances in the OS. But having recently tried Windows and Linux again for the first time in over a decade, I can report that nothing much has changed in their relative standings. Just the Windows Activation process alone is a crime against customers. System settings/Utilities/etc are some abomination of cruft accumulated over decades, in a conglomerate of interfaces that seem to try to emulate websites, and sometimes actually are websites that somehow make changes to your system.