Devices that Apple still sells in late 2022:

• 8th gen Intel Mac mini, UHD 630
• Xeon W Mac Pro, Radeon 580

Devices that Apple discontinued earlier in 2022:

• 10th gen Intel 27" iMac, Radeon 5xxx

Devices that Apple discontinued in 2021:

• Xeon W iMac Pro, Vega
• 10th gen Intel 13" MacBook Pro, Iris
• 8th gen Intel 21.5" iMac, Radeon 5xx

On occasion, a few of the users chipping in on a topic will speculate on the amount of remaining OS updates that Intel based devices will get in the future. AFAIK, there's no official roadmap or specific information coming from Apple on when exactly will their transition be total or what their further policy towards the devices sold will be in regards to OS updates.

In the past 17 years, only the transitioning Core Duo devices, the entry devices to the Intel ecosystem of products, warranted limited amount of software updates and rightfully so - the rapid leaps in technology between 2006 and 2008-2009 meant sacrificing software support for the sake of keeping up with what's cutting edge.

Looking back to the amount of software support shared between the Intel based devices since the Core2Duo era and forward to the Core i-X era, there appears to be at least 5 years worth of software updates from the moment a device gets discontinued to the end of the line where the device gets it's last applicable OS compatibility.

While there is a legitimate fear that Apple may cut short on their usual practice and shorten the lifespan of the devices they used to sell, it is highly unlikely they will update their devices only once or twice before these devices, a lot of them just recently retailing for over $2k, hit their eventual software EOL.

When it comes to build advice topics, it' really weird seeing people speculating on software EOL topics without proper facts into consideration and scaring people away from their potential builds. And while I do agree that most of the people would solve their macOS needs with Apple silicon devices, especially the refurb Mac Mini or the refurb Pro laptops/Studios, there still are a lot of specific use cases for Intel based builds - RAM amount/price ratio, storage amount/price ratio, storage redundancy, overall reparability, native multi-boot cases and so forth.

To sum up:

• You're likely safe with your Intel based builds for the next five years considering the historical data we have and silence on the Apple part in regards to the software transition
• Speculating on build advice posts about the remaining amount of software updates should be taken into consideration, but not in a way that provides the user with debatable or speculative data that would make them refrain from the build should they absolutely want one

Please feel free to delete if this in any way breaks the rules, thanks.