2 ms·

It does apply to the OS too - that is why Microsoft (and others) offer LTS (long-term-support) for their OS and pubilicise an end-of-life date for every version

It does apply to the OS too - that is why Microsoft (and others) offer LTS (long-term-support) for their OS and pubilicise an end-of-life date for every version they release. (And sometimes some businesses continue using it even after Microsoft stops LTS - it's only a recent trend that everyone is now forced to upgrade OSes over fears of security / lack of security updates). This is also why Microsoft Windows can get away with forced updates for home users but the business versions offer more fine-grained control over Windows update. As for running Win32 apps on different setups, it makes the system more complicated. When more vendors are involved, it also makes fixing things difficult - In case something breaks, Microsoft can say it is Apple's fault, and Apple will say we don't support Win32 apps, contact your developer. (Not to mention that Apple is not as corporate friendly as many others, like Microsoft, or IBM, as they are largely a business-to-consumer company and not a business-to-business company).

grishka 5y ago
No, I didn't mean to say to run win32 apps on OS X. I was comparing my idea to the thing[1] Apple actually made in the early 00s to ease the transition from classic Mac OS to OS X. My idea is that Microsoft would build a special version of Windows that supports all kinds of legacy apps, and put it into a VM. And probably not update it much if ever. That would allow them to deprecate, and then remove, older APIs in the main system, which would in turn allow rewriting the internals to be less vulnerable. They totally have the resources needed to do this. And there's no technical innovation needed to do this, either. As far as the end user is concerned, old apps still run. Except now they run in a sandboxed environment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Class...

grishka 5y ago

No, I didn't mean to say to run win32 apps on OS X. I was comparing my idea to the thing[1] Apple actually made in the early 00s to ease the transition from classic Mac OS to OS X. My idea is that Microsoft would build a special version of Windows that supports all kinds of legacy apps, and put it into a VM. And probably not update it much if ever. That would allow them to deprecate, and then remove, older APIs in the main system, which would in turn allow rewriting the internals to be less vulnerable. They totally have the resources needed to do this. And there's no technical innovation needed to do this, either. As far as the end user is concerned, old apps still run. Except now they run in a sandboxed environment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Class...