"There are clearly so many things that x86 does that no sane person would do if making a clean design today" and "x86 has been a continuously supported backwa

"There are clearly so many things that x86 does that no sane person would do if making a clean design today" and "x86 has been a continuously supported backwards compatible architecture for 35 years, and enabled the existence of most computers for most of those 35 years" are basically saying the same thing. Depending on which way you look at it, Intel can feel bad about it, or feel good about it.