This time there 2 big factors that were not there in '12.

1. 'office' cloud services - now you just need a browser for majority of docs/sheet/slides tasks

2. gaming - while it was possible back, but it was really hit or miss with a game. Nowadays vast majority of games work on Linux out of the box.

Yeah, fair! Same sentiment about Microsoft now as then, but fewer real blockers on the Linux side.

Probably Linux phones, they are not there yet, but maybe by the time Android becomes an iOS it will be there.

Problem will be with banking apps and such, well you can get an used iphone and in lockdown mode it should be fine even if it reaches EoL.

Bought a used iPhone 7 for a specific project requiring a supported OS (iOS15) and having a hardware security module and the phone worked fine for that but Microsoft Authenticator refused to install below iOS 16 for no obvious reason.

My bet is that YOLO is the reason for Microsoft being unable to make the authenticator work on an older iOS.

This is just the storage cost. That is they will keep your data on their servers, nothing more.

Now if you want to do something with the data, that's where you need to hold your wallet. Either you get their compute ($$$ for Amazon) or you send it to your data centre (egress means $$$ for Amazon).