If that sidechannel attack that has not been seen in the wild leads to me having to throw my CPU/computer into the bin because it is unsopported on a up to date OS for that reason, there isn't.
How should I, as a consumer, have voted against this with my wallet, before it happened?
We can argue whether this is the fault of the hardware manufacturer or the software company that sells the OS, but I am 100% sure that no consumer should take the blame for "not doing their research".
I happily resell you Intel processors at a 10x markup but you get a ten year warranty that I'll replace your processor with a new one of no worse specs, if similar vulnerabilities get discovered.
Details to be negotiated.
(More seriously: you don't need a new manufacturer. Someone else can do the warranty at a price.
That's actually what eg Apple Care: if a part inside your device catches on fire, Apple will replace it, even though they did not necessarily manufacture that part.
I have no clue whether their particular policy covers the vulnerabilities we are talking about. But you can easily imagine a variant of such an insurance policy that does.)
How should I, as a consumer, have voted against this with my wallet, before it happened?
We can argue whether this is the fault of the hardware manufacturer or the software company that sells the OS, but I am 100% sure that no consumer should take the blame for "not doing their research".