Apple is providing 6 years of support for old phones. As the author notes that's more than in the past, where they offered 4 years of support. My experience has been that the first generations had a lot of difference year to year and so when I moved from the 3GS to the 5 it was a massive difference and it would probably have been hard for Apple to support phones for as long as they do today with those handsets. That doesn't mean it's easy to support those old models and if Apple did 8 years of support instead of 6 we would still get these articles (but with ... iPhone 6s?).

At the end of the day things have a design life and Apple does offer pretty good support – and if we do indeed see newer handsets receiving updates for longer the authors argument ends up kind of being negated. If people were willing to pay for software updates after a certain number of years it might be viable but ultimately the author kinds of expect everyone else to support his phone without offering much in how he'll pay for said support with something that can tangibly be used to pay rent. And so it's probably easier the author just buys a new phone and remembers to turn the old one in for recycling.