4 ms·

> At this point I also don't care if it's at the cost of backward compatibility Yeah, no. This is the heart and soul of MS. Apple breaks stuff all the damn tim

by jfoutz 5y ago

> At this point I also don't care if it's at the cost of backward compatibility Yeah, no. This is the heart and soul of MS. Apple breaks stuff all the damn time. MicroSoft keeps things working forever. Some people pay for upgrades. Some pay so they never have to upgrade. Consumers upgrade, and apple makes a lot of money. Businesses don't upgrade, and pay for the privilege. Kinda sucks, but preserving how we got here is a huge deal. 20 year old systems are core to frighteningly important systems. Sure, make another, good luck handling the zillion battle tested edge cases. Windows may be horrible now, but ancient code still works. Your hand cramp is less expensive than a rewrite. (this might be a little aggressive. apologies, this is kinda a hot take)

mrweasel 5y ago
No no, you're completely right. Fixing my complains about Windows comes at a horrific cost. Microsoft can continue down the current path and Windows will still be hugely successful and widely used. It's will just be terrible and continue to get worse. Most people and businesses will just live with it. I mean if Windows is just the thing that launches Steam, then you don't really care. If it's just the shit SAP/Excel/what-ever launcher your IT department forces you to use, then fine. Windows just won't be a smooth experience or something people enjoy using.
- toast0 5y ago
  The problem is right now the biggest thing going for Windows is the historic baggage. If Microsoft makes be choose between baggage and something new and possibly better, I'm also going to consider other options. In that case, Microsoft had better offer something amazing, that's worth the cost of removing history. They've done it from time to time. The benefits of NT outweighed the loss of tools that required the windows 9x models; although not enough for many to switch to 2000; XP made some concessions to seal the deal. The benefits of 64-bit windows are generally worth the loss of 16-bit applications (although winevdm shows that they could have made that work). But, I haven't seen much from Microsoft lately that leads me to think they'd be able to pull something like that off. If I had to make a choice, I'd probably go to something else that feels like it respects users.

by jfoutz 5y ago

mrweasel 5y ago

No no, you're completely right. Fixing my complains about Windows comes at a horrific cost. Microsoft can continue down the current path and Windows will still be hugely successful and widely used. It's will just be terrible and continue to get worse. Most people and businesses will just live with it. I mean if Windows is just the thing that launches Steam, then you don't really care. If it's just the shit SAP/Excel/what-ever launcher your IT department forces you to use, then fine. Windows just won't be a smooth experience or something people enjoy using.

toast0 5y ago
The problem is right now the biggest thing going for Windows is the historic baggage. If Microsoft makes be choose between baggage and something new and possibly better, I'm also going to consider other options. In that case, Microsoft had better offer something amazing, that's worth the cost of removing history. They've done it from time to time. The benefits of NT outweighed the loss of tools that required the windows 9x models; although not enough for many to switch to 2000; XP made some concessions to seal the deal. The benefits of 64-bit windows are generally worth the loss of 16-bit applications (although winevdm shows that they could have made that work). But, I haven't seen much from Microsoft lately that leads me to think they'd be able to pull something like that off. If I had to make a choice, I'd probably go to something else that feels like it respects users.