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The best counterargument I know to "Apple should support every app forever" is Windows. Microsoft did that, and modulo 16-bit Windows 3.1 stuff still more or l

The best counterargument I know to "Apple should support every app forever" is Windows. Microsoft did that, and modulo 16-bit Windows 3.1 stuff still more or less do. The four or five different flavors of Control Panel UI, reaching all the way back to Windows 2000 in a totally inconsistent and barely comprehensible farrago, is the very least of what came of it. The underpinnings of the OS are, by all appearances and accounts, just alike: so totally fragmented and incoherent that it'll take them another 20 years to do anything about that even if they start the day before yesterday. That makes it nigh impossible to do anything both new and worth having - hence Windows 8, 10, and I assume 11 as well as whatever the next at least three to five versions are called. (I'll have to assume, because after Windows 10 I will never willingly buy another consumer product from Microsoft for the rest of my life.)

_gabe_ 5y ago
I don't see a counterargument here. "Microsoft did that". Yes, and they still lead the global market share for desktops and laptops. I would like to wager that most breaking API changes don't actually need to happen. If you look at the Win32 API they have some of the best forward thinking APIs that I've seen. That means you have a lot of weird stuff like having to pass the size of a the struct you're using to use a function, but it means that they can safely upgrade those functions without making a breaking change. In an ideal world, you would think developers had learned how to make a stable API for an OS over the past 25 years. If that were true then we could nail down a stable API and have a well defined input and output, and then simply change the internals to make a non breaking change. I think backwards compatibility should be something developers prioritize, because it forces you to think about how to structure a program in a forward thinking manner and focus on clear requirements (easier said than done). Anyways, I highly doubt windows would be the preferred gaming platform today if they didn't value this backwards compatibility. God knows that the OS sucks in so many areas. Most people would love to switch to something better, but the fact that windows makes it so easy to develop something and have it just work for 25 years clearly has a large impact on how many developers it attracts. Put another way, who wants to develop for somebody that says "anything you make on my platform will be obsolete in 2-3 years?". And I can guarantee you, that mentality does not appeal to a lot of people.
- throwanem 5y ago
  > Yes, and they still lead the global market share for desktops and laptops. Which means little, because no one is competing with them. > who wants to develop for somebody that says "anything you make on my platform will be obsolete in 2-3 years"? Anyone who wants access to Apple's base of high-value mobile users. Note too that "obsolete" is inaccurate here. Those who've bought an app can continue to download and use it as long as it still runs on their devices, as I do with several apps that have aged out of purchasability. What's accurate is that devs need to update their app at least once every couple of years or so to keep it available to new customers. If I were running a business that depended significantly on app installs for revenue, I think that would be a reasonable bar to clear - at any rate, it's posed no problem for those businesses I've worked with that do.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    > Anyone who wants access to Apple's base of high-value mobile users. This high-value user is getting increasingly tired of Apple's shit and is actively looking for an alternative. Their stewardship of the App Store is increasingly abysmal. Their promotion of subscription pricing over other business models is anti-consumer. And "it just works" is increasingly a punchline (try using Time Machine in 2022). Apple still has two advantages though: excellent hardware and a focus on privacy. The former was at-risk in the 2016-2020 keyboard era, but they have course-corrected somewhat. The latter seems increasingly at risk with moves like the recent CSAM kerfuffle. Apple's once small but excellent stable of third party software has grown increasingly unpalatable. There are many more apps, sure, but when it seems like 9/10 are either outright scams or subscription services for things as simple as calculators and notes apps it's hard for me to look at their marketplace with anything other than disgust.
    - throwanem 5y ago
      Well, I'm not about to try to argue you out of conclusions you've derived from analysis of your own experience; aside from the insult so implied, it would be a waste of both our time.
    - 5y ago
yyyk 5y ago
Is there any good argument that backward compatibility is what holds Windows back compared to other Microsoft faults? So there are a few variants of the Control Panel. That should not have prevented MS from porting every setting that mattered to the new panel already at Windows 8 (while keeping the old panel for apps that used it), and it isn't clear why they did not.
- throwanem 5y ago
  No, it shouldn't have. I don't have time to dig it back up right now, but not too long ago there was a fairly detailed discussion, either on or linked from HN, of what the build process and organizational structure around Windows development is actually like, and the astonishing degree of friction it imposes. The tl;dr: as I recall it is that full RC builds via their bespoke hierarchical build scheme take weeks from start to finish, and organizational incentives produce a hoarding of features and areas of responsibility that massively further complicate actually shipping even the smallest thing because of the enormous range of stakeholders whose buy-in you need to get and maintain for even the smallest thing to actually become doable. I regret I didn't save a link to that discussion, but I believe my summary here is accurate. If so, it's no surprise that nothing new and good seems ever to get done, because how can it? In that kind of environment it's such a Sisyphean misery to do anything that the only things worth doing are those you'll die if you don't.
wwweston 5y ago
Windows backward compatibility is something I cast a jealous eye on. It leads to the idea that a platform can actually transcend sand-castle transience and get to a place where it’s sufficiently stable to provide decades-long investments in tools. How often do you need a new roof? That’s the level of intervention we should be shooting for. Maybe longer considering bits don’t literally rot or rust and all most software needs to run is compatible system calls. Wouldn’t even stop those who decide they want to learn new apps every 5 years.
- throwanem 5y ago
  Oh, I'm not knocking back compat for its own sake! A hundred years from now, Windows will probably provide sufficient case-study fodder for at least half a yearlong course in engineering for it, assuming we've figured out by then how to teach in a systematic way what we actually do.
jeroenhd 5y ago
It's terrible how Microsoft took Windows and turned it into a piece of "modern" software. The constant drive to change, update, alter, combined with the unquenchable thirst for more data has driven Windows to be a polished turd on top of a solid core. The Windows 10 and 11 kernel designs are amazingly impressive but the "Windows" part of Windows seems to get worse and more inconsistent with every release. I wish I could run the Windows 7 GUI, with all its settings and visuals, on top of the Windows 11 kernel. I didn't need hamburger menus and giant "touch-friendly" buttons everywhere, I needed better HiDPI support and less kernel-mode drivers that can take down the entire system, like Windows 10 and 11 delivered. Nobody wanted whatever the hell Microsoft Edge is these days, we wanted advancements like modern DirectX and HyperV. I miss Aero and GUI elements that felt distinct from the background instead of this "modern" flat design. There's still no Linux theme that mimics Aero and I hate that. Now even GNOME is moving away from the old bolded style, going for the ugly flat libadwaita theme instead.
- throwanem 5y ago
  > I wish I could run the Windows 7 GUI, with all its settings and visuals, on top of the Windows 11 kernel. From your keyboard to God's inbox...
AlexandrB 5y ago
This narrative bothers me because it conflates API support and UI consistency and also doesn't ring true. Between Windows 95 and Windows 7, Microsoft was able to maintain pretty good consistency in its internal UI. Yes, some more pro-oriented parts of the OS were very old (regedit), but it was overall pretty cohesive. What happened next was a series of half-hearted attempts to change windows' UI paradigm. This created a set of competing UI frameworks and styles - Windows 7 and older "classic" style, Windows 8 "Metro" style, then the "somewhere in the middle" Windows 10 style, and finally the rounded Windows 11 style we see today. Oh and "ribbon" vs toolbar fits somewhere in there too. I think the real problem is Microsoft has failed to commit to any of these, and each change has left behind a bunch of OS elements that were just rewritten and is hard to justify rewriting again. Contrast this to macOS, which has had mostly consistent UI concepts since 10.1. The cosmetic appearance has changed somewhat, but usually not in a way that requires a rewrite. I still use macOS apps dating back to 2010 and they look fine. iOS had a big change with iOS 7, but has had a mostly consistent direction since then as well. I think the problem is that Apple's decision here seems arbitrary. They're not culling apps that are broken because of API changes. They're culling apps that still work and look fine but just haven't been updated.
- throwanem 5y ago
  Apps that are broken because of API changes eventually cull themselves too, but much more messily. Especially so when Apple runs the storefront and at some point touches every return - most especially when the original dev is gone or doesn't answer support requests and process refunds, and Apple is the only recourse. I don't know that I'd do it quite this way if it was my call to make, but I don't know what it's like to run the iOS app store, either. Presumably from that perspective this is likely to solve more problems than it creates. Maybe whoever made the decision is wrong about that, but are they more likely to be wrong than I am, with my more or less maximally uninformed perspective on how best to run the business they are actually running? > Between Windows 95 and Windows 7 Windows 7 hit RTM in 2009. > This narrative bothers me because it conflates API support and UI consistency That's sort of fair, I think, but I don't run the Windows 10 or 11 kernel and libraries alone in a headless install; I'm stuck with their godawful UI, too. And their intolerable update scheme, as biddable as a cat but offering far less to make up for it. And WSL2, which is a shiny new wrapper over precisely the same experience I daily had with Virtualbox in 2008 - except where it somehow manages not to be as good. Others can go on, I'm sure, but I can't because that was as far as I got before I gave up and got a Mac Mini to do that work on instead. I'll grant that the back compat counts for something, sure. I've worked with lots of folks in other engineering disciplines who care a lot about it because they really do still use software from 2002 - usually with hardware that's even older. Does it count for as much as every Windows user seems to have to pay for it? That I'm not so sure about. I'll grant, too, that WSL2 makes web development a lot more accessible to a lot more people than ever before, especially folks who are just starting and benefit most from being met where they are. No matter how lacking in comfort I personally may find the way they go about it, I wouldn't give that expansion of access up for anything. But no one I know who uses Windows 10 likes it - and I'm not a member of Silicon Valley-style or any other monoculture, so that "no one" actually counts for something when I say it, and it really is no one. Ultimately, for most such folks I've talked with about this, their reasons are mostly similar to mine, or at least overlapping. I think I have some sense of why that is, and I've explained my view, but maybe I'm wrong about it; I don't suppose I really know that much more about the Windows business's culture than I do that of the App Store. Could be they know exactly what they're doing, but it sure doesn't look that way to me.
eternityforest 5y ago
Aside from forced updates, and a few bugs that may be as much the proprietary app's fault as the OS, I don't see an issue here. When I use Windows, it generally works. It's not as nice for developers as mainstream Linux, where you can just build your deb package with a dependency on PyQt and the system can figure it out, but from a user perspective... stuff seems to mostly just work. Linux Mint is just a bit better in recent years, but Windows is mostly OK and still does some stuff better than others.

_gabe_ 5y ago

I don't see a counterargument here. "Microsoft did that". Yes, and they still lead the global market share for desktops and laptops. I would like to wager that most breaking API changes don't actually need to happen. If you look at the Win32 API they have some of the best forward thinking APIs that I've seen. That means you have a lot of weird stuff like having to pass the size of a the struct you're using to use a function, but it means that they can safely upgrade those functions without making a breaking change. In an ideal world, you would think developers had learned how to make a stable API for an OS over the past 25 years. If that were true then we could nail down a stable API and have a well defined input and output, and then simply change the internals to make a non breaking change. I think backwards compatibility should be something developers prioritize, because it forces you to think about how to structure a program in a forward thinking manner and focus on clear requirements (easier said than done). Anyways, I highly doubt windows would be the preferred gaming platform today if they didn't value this backwards compatibility. God knows that the OS sucks in so many areas. Most people would love to switch to something better, but the fact that windows makes it so easy to develop something and have it just work for 25 years clearly has a large impact on how many developers it attracts. Put another way, who wants to develop for somebody that says "anything you make on my platform will be obsolete in 2-3 years?". And I can guarantee you, that mentality does not appeal to a lot of people.

throwanem 5y ago
> Yes, and they still lead the global market share for desktops and laptops. Which means little, because no one is competing with them. > who wants to develop for somebody that says "anything you make on my platform will be obsolete in 2-3 years"? Anyone who wants access to Apple's base of high-value mobile users. Note too that "obsolete" is inaccurate here. Those who've bought an app can continue to download and use it as long as it still runs on their devices, as I do with several apps that have aged out of purchasability. What's accurate is that devs need to update their app at least once every couple of years or so to keep it available to new customers. If I were running a business that depended significantly on app installs for revenue, I think that would be a reasonable bar to clear - at any rate, it's posed no problem for those businesses I've worked with that do.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > Anyone who wants access to Apple's base of high-value mobile users. This high-value user is getting increasingly tired of Apple's shit and is actively looking for an alternative. Their stewardship of the App Store is increasingly abysmal. Their promotion of subscription pricing over other business models is anti-consumer. And "it just works" is increasingly a punchline (try using Time Machine in 2022). Apple still has two advantages though: excellent hardware and a focus on privacy. The former was at-risk in the 2016-2020 keyboard era, but they have course-corrected somewhat. The latter seems increasingly at risk with moves like the recent CSAM kerfuffle. Apple's once small but excellent stable of third party software has grown increasingly unpalatable. There are many more apps, sure, but when it seems like 9/10 are either outright scams or subscription services for things as simple as calculators and notes apps it's hard for me to look at their marketplace with anything other than disgust.
  - throwanem 5y ago
    Well, I'm not about to try to argue you out of conclusions you've derived from analysis of your own experience; aside from the insult so implied, it would be a waste of both our time.
  - 5y ago

yyyk 5y ago

Is there any good argument that backward compatibility is what holds Windows back compared to other Microsoft faults? So there are a few variants of the Control Panel. That should not have prevented MS from porting every setting that mattered to the new panel already at Windows 8 (while keeping the old panel for apps that used it), and it isn't clear why they did not.

throwanem 5y ago
No, it shouldn't have. I don't have time to dig it back up right now, but not too long ago there was a fairly detailed discussion, either on or linked from HN, of what the build process and organizational structure around Windows development is actually like, and the astonishing degree of friction it imposes. The tl;dr: as I recall it is that full RC builds via their bespoke hierarchical build scheme take weeks from start to finish, and organizational incentives produce a hoarding of features and areas of responsibility that massively further complicate actually shipping even the smallest thing because of the enormous range of stakeholders whose buy-in you need to get and maintain for even the smallest thing to actually become doable. I regret I didn't save a link to that discussion, but I believe my summary here is accurate. If so, it's no surprise that nothing new and good seems ever to get done, because how can it? In that kind of environment it's such a Sisyphean misery to do anything that the only things worth doing are those you'll die if you don't.

wwweston 5y ago

Windows backward compatibility is something I cast a jealous eye on. It leads to the idea that a platform can actually transcend sand-castle transience and get to a place where it’s sufficiently stable to provide decades-long investments in tools. How often do you need a new roof? That’s the level of intervention we should be shooting for. Maybe longer considering bits don’t literally rot or rust and all most software needs to run is compatible system calls. Wouldn’t even stop those who decide they want to learn new apps every 5 years.

throwanem 5y ago
Oh, I'm not knocking back compat for its own sake! A hundred years from now, Windows will probably provide sufficient case-study fodder for at least half a yearlong course in engineering for it, assuming we've figured out by then how to teach in a systematic way what we actually do.

jeroenhd 5y ago

It's terrible how Microsoft took Windows and turned it into a piece of "modern" software. The constant drive to change, update, alter, combined with the unquenchable thirst for more data has driven Windows to be a polished turd on top of a solid core. The Windows 10 and 11 kernel designs are amazingly impressive but the "Windows" part of Windows seems to get worse and more inconsistent with every release. I wish I could run the Windows 7 GUI, with all its settings and visuals, on top of the Windows 11 kernel. I didn't need hamburger menus and giant "touch-friendly" buttons everywhere, I needed better HiDPI support and less kernel-mode drivers that can take down the entire system, like Windows 10 and 11 delivered. Nobody wanted whatever the hell Microsoft Edge is these days, we wanted advancements like modern DirectX and HyperV. I miss Aero and GUI elements that felt distinct from the background instead of this "modern" flat design. There's still no Linux theme that mimics Aero and I hate that. Now even GNOME is moving away from the old bolded style, going for the ugly flat libadwaita theme instead.

throwanem 5y ago
> I wish I could run the Windows 7 GUI, with all its settings and visuals, on top of the Windows 11 kernel. From your keyboard to God's inbox...

AlexandrB 5y ago

This narrative bothers me because it conflates API support and UI consistency and also doesn't ring true. Between Windows 95 and Windows 7, Microsoft was able to maintain pretty good consistency in its internal UI. Yes, some more pro-oriented parts of the OS were very old (regedit), but it was overall pretty cohesive. What happened next was a series of half-hearted attempts to change windows' UI paradigm. This created a set of competing UI frameworks and styles - Windows 7 and older "classic" style, Windows 8 "Metro" style, then the "somewhere in the middle" Windows 10 style, and finally the rounded Windows 11 style we see today. Oh and "ribbon" vs toolbar fits somewhere in there too. I think the real problem is Microsoft has failed to commit to any of these, and each change has left behind a bunch of OS elements that were just rewritten and is hard to justify rewriting again. Contrast this to macOS, which has had mostly consistent UI concepts since 10.1. The cosmetic appearance has changed somewhat, but usually not in a way that requires a rewrite. I still use macOS apps dating back to 2010 and they look fine. iOS had a big change with iOS 7, but has had a mostly consistent direction since then as well. I think the problem is that Apple's decision here seems arbitrary. They're not culling apps that are broken because of API changes. They're culling apps that still work and look fine but just haven't been updated.

throwanem 5y ago
Apps that are broken because of API changes eventually cull themselves too, but much more messily. Especially so when Apple runs the storefront and at some point touches every return - most especially when the original dev is gone or doesn't answer support requests and process refunds, and Apple is the only recourse. I don't know that I'd do it quite this way if it was my call to make, but I don't know what it's like to run the iOS app store, either. Presumably from that perspective this is likely to solve more problems than it creates. Maybe whoever made the decision is wrong about that, but are they more likely to be wrong than I am, with my more or less maximally uninformed perspective on how best to run the business they are actually running? > Between Windows 95 and Windows 7 Windows 7 hit RTM in 2009. > This narrative bothers me because it conflates API support and UI consistency That's sort of fair, I think, but I don't run the Windows 10 or 11 kernel and libraries alone in a headless install; I'm stuck with their godawful UI, too. And their intolerable update scheme, as biddable as a cat but offering far less to make up for it. And WSL2, which is a shiny new wrapper over precisely the same experience I daily had with Virtualbox in 2008 - except where it somehow manages not to be as good. Others can go on, I'm sure, but I can't because that was as far as I got before I gave up and got a Mac Mini to do that work on instead. I'll grant that the back compat counts for something, sure. I've worked with lots of folks in other engineering disciplines who care a lot about it because they really do still use software from 2002 - usually with hardware that's even older. Does it count for as much as every Windows user seems to have to pay for it? That I'm not so sure about. I'll grant, too, that WSL2 makes web development a lot more accessible to a lot more people than ever before, especially folks who are just starting and benefit most from being met where they are. No matter how lacking in comfort I personally may find the way they go about it, I wouldn't give that expansion of access up for anything. But no one I know who uses Windows 10 likes it - and I'm not a member of Silicon Valley-style or any other monoculture, so that "no one" actually counts for something when I say it, and it really is no one. Ultimately, for most such folks I've talked with about this, their reasons are mostly similar to mine, or at least overlapping. I think I have some sense of why that is, and I've explained my view, but maybe I'm wrong about it; I don't suppose I really know that much more about the Windows business's culture than I do that of the App Store. Could be they know exactly what they're doing, but it sure doesn't look that way to me.

eternityforest 5y ago

Aside from forced updates, and a few bugs that may be as much the proprietary app's fault as the OS, I don't see an issue here. When I use Windows, it generally works. It's not as nice for developers as mainstream Linux, where you can just build your deb package with a dependency on PyQt and the system can figure it out, but from a user perspective... stuff seems to mostly just work. Linux Mint is just a bit better in recent years, but Windows is mostly OK and still does some stuff better than others.