3 ms·

When people wonder why Windows is so big and seemingly complex, and why it still uses stupid things like a registry, this is why. Microsoft deserves accolades

When people wonder why Windows is so big and seemingly complex, and why it still uses stupid things like a registry, this is why. Microsoft deserves accolades for maintaining compatibility on this scale, while still working on just about any combination of hardware under the sun. I'm sure they would have loved to be able to do what Apple did with OSX, but there are things you can pull off with 3% market share that are completely out of the question with 95%.

__david__ 16y ago
To be fair, the original OS X was pretty backwards compatible--they ran OS 9 stuff in a virtual environment much like Windows 7 runs its older stuff. The Intel transition is the first time that Apple has been so lax about backwards compatibility. They dropped Classic on Intel Macs and they're about to drop PowerPC compatibility. It's a shame--I have OS 9 Games I would love to run on my MacBook Pro. Not to mention all the old programs I wrote.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  Right, but Apple didn't have to worry about the thousands of corporate clients running Enterprise software that relied upon some specific API calls to handle billions of dollars in business. When Apple says, "too bad, upgrade", their customers mostly just do so. If Microsoft were to take that approach, they'd lose billions in revenue. My point, however, wasn't really that OSX isn't backward-compatible, but rather that I'm sure there aren't many engineers at Microsoft who wouldn't love to throw out the whole Windows paradigm and build something new and better from scratch. Hell, I bet BillG himself would have loved to Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish *nix. I think people have a tendency to view Windows' rather bloated codebase and adherence to outdated architecture as a failure of imagination on the part of its programmers, whereas it's really just a practicality necessitated by their user base.
  - IDisposableHero 16y ago
    I'm sure there aren't many engineers at Microsoft who wouldn't love to throw out the whole Windows paradigm and build something new and better from scratch. They kinda did. When Windows 3.1 was a hit, the server OS was Windows NT ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT ) NT = New Technology. Windows 95, 98 and Me are evolutions of the Windows 3.1 codebase, and then mercifully died. NT begat Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 You can see that they changed a lot of OS internals for the better (writing C++ code on win 3.1 it's trivial to lock up the whole OS, NT didn't have that issue), and then worked hard for compatibility.
    - redthrowaway 16y ago
      While that's certainly true, the differences between NT 4.0 and 98 weren't particularly huge. NT was certainly the better OS, and it's good that they decided to adopt it, but it wasn't really a paradigm shift, and Windows applications were still cross-compatible. My intention isn't to say that Microsoft hasn't made significant positive changes over the years, but rather that Windows would be a vastly superior operating system if the same people responsible for it currently were able to start from scratch. Say what you will about Microsoft, they still have some incredible engineering talent.
mcritz 16y ago
Can someone help me understand the Vista upgrade? For many users the “clean install” (where it deleted everything prior to upgrading) was the only option available.

__david__ 16y ago

To be fair, the original OS X was pretty backwards compatible--they ran OS 9 stuff in a virtual environment much like Windows 7 runs its older stuff. The Intel transition is the first time that Apple has been so lax about backwards compatibility. They dropped Classic on Intel Macs and they're about to drop PowerPC compatibility. It's a shame--I have OS 9 Games I would love to run on my MacBook Pro. Not to mention all the old programs I wrote.

redthrowaway 16y ago
Right, but Apple didn't have to worry about the thousands of corporate clients running Enterprise software that relied upon some specific API calls to handle billions of dollars in business. When Apple says, "too bad, upgrade", their customers mostly just do so. If Microsoft were to take that approach, they'd lose billions in revenue. My point, however, wasn't really that OSX isn't backward-compatible, but rather that I'm sure there aren't many engineers at Microsoft who wouldn't love to throw out the whole Windows paradigm and build something new and better from scratch. Hell, I bet BillG himself would have loved to Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish *nix. I think people have a tendency to view Windows' rather bloated codebase and adherence to outdated architecture as a failure of imagination on the part of its programmers, whereas it's really just a practicality necessitated by their user base.
- IDisposableHero 16y ago
  I'm sure there aren't many engineers at Microsoft who wouldn't love to throw out the whole Windows paradigm and build something new and better from scratch. They kinda did. When Windows 3.1 was a hit, the server OS was Windows NT ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT ) NT = New Technology. Windows 95, 98 and Me are evolutions of the Windows 3.1 codebase, and then mercifully died. NT begat Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 You can see that they changed a lot of OS internals for the better (writing C++ code on win 3.1 it's trivial to lock up the whole OS, NT didn't have that issue), and then worked hard for compatibility.
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    While that's certainly true, the differences between NT 4.0 and 98 weren't particularly huge. NT was certainly the better OS, and it's good that they decided to adopt it, but it wasn't really a paradigm shift, and Windows applications were still cross-compatible. My intention isn't to say that Microsoft hasn't made significant positive changes over the years, but rather that Windows would be a vastly superior operating system if the same people responsible for it currently were able to start from scratch. Say what you will about Microsoft, they still have some incredible engineering talent.

mcritz 16y ago

Can someone help me understand the Vista upgrade? For many users the “clean install” (where it deleted everything prior to upgrading) was the only option available.