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My 2012 Macbook Pro has got a 2.7GHz quad-core i7, 16GB RAM, a 500GB SSD and a 2880 x 1800 retina display. There is no reason at all why it can't run 10.16 Big Sur but apparently Apple have decided that I must buy a new machine if I want to stay in the supported ecosystem.
Catalina is the problem with the switch to Apple Music from iTunes it no longer supports cloud-based synching without a Music account. Plus there's the well-documented heat issue. The OS seems to be rigged to run older processors hot, mine is now rarely below 70C.
I could go back to 10.14 I suppose but that will drop out of support in a couple of years. There's a lot of pressure on Apple at the moment so we might see a change of heart, but I doubt it.
Coincidentally I also moved to Mac with a similar spec MBP (2012, but pre-Retina, i7, 16Gb and 500gb SSD as you could DIY upgrade these). But it would be foolish to upgrade a Mac today with the new ARM chip support imminent.... maybe in 18 months!
Interestingly MSFT seems to be doing well with Win 10 support for old PCs. I just updated an old Vista machine (2009? 3Gb RAM, Pentium 2-core...) to Win 10. Apart from the sound and network card being out of (driver) support, it works fine... must put it up on freegle...
Also just been reading about folks getting Win10 running on a Raspberry Pi4! They are trying to get past the somewhat limiting 1Gb RAM limit for their ARM Win10 support. Then again the 4 or 8Gb version is all anyone needs (running Linux anyway) for email, web browsing etc.
