a more relevant analogy is apple's mac-to-macosx switch. they completely dumped the old os and replaced it with a new one, relegating the old one to a poorly-i

a more relevant analogy is apple's mac-to-macosx switch. they completely dumped the old os and replaced it with a new one, relegating the old one to a poorly-integrated emulator. it was very painful. the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the old guard was loud and angry. but it was good for the company in the long run. now the old macos emulator is all but gone, as are the complaints. it was short-term painful, but a long-term gigantic win. the same would be true for windows, if it were rewritten from scratch. it's not that the code itself needs a rewrite, it's that the windows api is a patch on a bag on a pile of spit. the fact that microsoft has put such a high priority on backward compatibility is slowly strangling windows to death.