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There was also no agreement or assumption that the software would work on any OS upgrade in the future. No annual OS releases (Mac, iOS, android); no monthly OS
by x0x0 7y ago
There was also no agreement or assumption that the software would work on any OS upgrade in the future. No annual OS releases (Mac, iOS, android); no monthly OS releases (chrome, firefox), nothing. No assumption that bugfixes were included: companies regularly charged for bugfixes in the form of upgrade pricing. No assumption that a piece of software would continue to work while external APIs mutated. No online services that require services, and more importantly, human time to keep them up and secure. Pricing was one to two orders of magnitude higher. To the extent that there was free software, it was almost always subsidized by the OS.
- Razengan 7y agoAnd none of it was remotely denied from running if the company could not keep withdrawing money from your account, even if it did not require any remote resources to continue functioning.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoWell, it certainly helped that Windows updates used to very rarely broke existing software. That this is largely no longer true is itself a problem. Maintaining compatibility (when reasonable) may be more work for the OS vendor, but it creates far less work for all of the individual developers. And reliability for users.