Apple is a publicly traded company as well, which means they have the same incentives, but they do the exact opposite, having frequently broken backwards compatibility in major ways in order to make massive structural changes, like moving to an entirely different processor architecture not once, not twice, but three times now, and often breaking backwards compatibility in major ways in order to reduce bloat.

This is more likely a cultural issue than a technical one. Basically, both companies practice very different philosophies when it comes to engineering decisions. Of course, a major reason why Apple can do this while Microsoft can’t is the fact that Apple makes their own hardware, while Microsoft doesn’t.