What "updates" are you referring to? In more than 15 years of using Emacs I've not once been blocked from doing work due to any kind of breakage.

Right, I can't understand what this breaking refers to?

I've been using emacs every day all day every time I'm front of a computer, since 1991. I need only one finger to count the pieces of software I've been using that long that have never crashed or broken on me in any way.

I'm a Spacemacs user, and I just tried to update all my packages and my emacs is now somehow broken. Luckily I only did that one one of my two work machines so I will just do without the mac until I have the time to unfuck it.

I think it depends on which parts of the ecosystem you use. The org publication/export logic has changed a few times in the past 10 years. If you relied on quirks in that in your configuration you would have had to fix your code to repair it after some upgrades.[1]

I have also run into compatibility issues when using older versions of Emacs with newer packages, and newer Emacs versions with older packages.

[1]: I totally did not build my blog on top of a bunch of these quirks. Every time one of them is fixed I'm reminded of the workflow xkcd. https://m.xkcd.com/1172/

He means time passing, aka bitrot. Emacs is designed for quick hacks which often rely on filesystem and shell behaviors outside itself to remain constant.