An alternative to replacing the drive inside the iMac would be to attach an SSD to the Thunderbolt port. OS X and the Mac firmware don't really care if a drive is external or internal in most cases for booting.
That would be great! But what should I use for a thunderbolt hard drive? I haven't seen those around and I don't really see enclosures either. How do I tell the computer to boot to the external drive instead?
In Windows terms, it's similar to how Microsoft doesn't release updates for Windows 8 anymore, however they do for the new OS they released a year later, 8.1. Any machine capable of running 8 is capable of running 8.1. Just as any Mac capable of running 10.8 is capable of running 10.11.
I don't think that's a very direct comparison. 8.1 is a weird standout in the Windows lineage, and I viewed it as more of a Windows update that future updates were dependent on, like service packs. Apple moved to this "we're calling every version 10 from now on" quite some time ago, so to be analogous Microsoft would have had to end support for 7, and they even still support Vista for another few months.
Like I said, there's good and bad aspects to the way both companies handle this area. What I dislike about how both of them will be handling things going forward (and Apple has been doing for a while now) is that security and interface are intertwined, and you have little choice but to accept the new changes or incur risk. It's an annoyance that I dislike about mobile operating systems in particular, and cloud services in general. If you don't like a new UI element, tough luck!
But at least Apple gives you some time to prepare yourself. I'm not looking forward to the first time Microsoft overhauls Windows 10 and forces the upgrade on everyone. We'll have a Vista/8 operating system on our hands, but this we won't have the option of skipping it!
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