I agree Microsoft excels at backwards compatibility, sometimes at a great cost. This often prevents them from performing aggressive innovations. But it's the ri

I agree Microsoft excels at backwards compatibility, sometimes at a great cost. This often prevents them from performing aggressive innovations. But it's the right compromise for a company whose business clients represent a significant portion of their overall revenues. Apple is mostly a consumer-focused company. Thus, backwards compatibility is sometimes a liability. If you are forced to keep old code working, e.g. you can't optimize for new instructions that may reduce energy usage. Apple has historically done smooth transitions from one architecture to another, offering plenty of time for consumers to migrate, and providing emulation of older architectures in several forms. If you like sane backwards compatibility, things like Nix and Docker are likely to provide great stuff in the future. Not applicable to Windows, though.