3 ms·

I'm saying this as someone who does not care about Windows (or Microsoft) at all, and hasn't been using Windows besides maybe in a vm once a year for at least a

by anyfoo 4y ago

I'm saying this as someone who does not care about Windows (or Microsoft) at all, and hasn't been using Windows besides maybe in a vm once a year for at least a decade now: To say they have done "just enough always and only enough" is massively underselling it to a level where it's basically wrong. Everyone who has been following Raymond Chen's The Old New Thing blog for some time knows the massive, quite impressive, and at times even "unreasonable" seeming work to keep things compatible. Especially, but not exclusively, in the Windows 95 days. Quite possibly that has changed in the last few years or even decade (I wouldn't know), but at least the claim that they never put a huge amount of work into compatibility is just not true. Here is just one of many articles that outlines some insanity that Windows did for compatibility, stuff where other OSes (including Linux, at least outside of the kernel) would have rightfully said that this software needs to be fixed instead: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20160404-00/?p=93261 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20160404-00/?p=93... - I found this one randomly after a cursory search, there were other articles that may prove the point even more. Raymond Chen did also state that the more things shifted to be "online", the more reasonable it became to let vendors fix issues with patches (often with MS's guidance) instead of doing insane tricks in the OS, but still: Credit where credit is due.

anyfoo 4y ago
Moreover (replying to myself here), compatibility was explicitly stated as a goal. Keeping existing software running got people to upgrade to the new OS (at a time where almost every major OS version had to be bought), and to not abandon the OS line for another incompatible one. Back when there was no "web" as a unifying platform. So yes, of course that was based on business and likely no other reason. People after all will certainly argue that at lot of the cruft makes things worse, not better; it took a long time to get rid of most of MS-DOS for one thing, and I bet there's still mountains of other ancient remnants that get in the way. But to say that MS has not put "a huge amount of work [into] compatibility" is just distorting history. For better or for worse, compatibility seemed to have been one of the core principles for quite some time.
kalleboo 4y ago
Even Apple, who is notorious for not caring about backwards compatibility, does these kinds of backwards compatibility fixes in the OS https://worthdoingbadly.com/appkitcompat/ https://worthdoingbadly.com/appkitcompat/ But the lengths to which Microsoft has historically gone to for backwards compatibility have been legendary - if decades-old internal corporate apps for which the source was lost 10 years ago don't work on the latest Windows, they don't get all that sweet upgrade license revenue. It's their bread and butter.

by anyfoo 4y ago

anyfoo 4y ago

Moreover (replying to myself here), compatibility was explicitly stated as a goal. Keeping existing software running got people to upgrade to the new OS (at a time where almost every major OS version had to be bought), and to not abandon the OS line for another incompatible one. Back when there was no "web" as a unifying platform. So yes, of course that was based on business and likely no other reason. People after all will certainly argue that at lot of the cruft makes things worse, not better; it took a long time to get rid of most of MS-DOS for one thing, and I bet there's still mountains of other ancient remnants that get in the way. But to say that MS has not put "a huge amount of work [into] compatibility" is just distorting history. For better or for worse, compatibility seemed to have been one of the core principles for quite some time.

kalleboo 4y ago

Even Apple, who is notorious for not caring about backwards compatibility, does these kinds of backwards compatibility fixes in the OS https://worthdoingbadly.com/appkitcompat/ https://worthdoingbadly.com/appkitcompat/ But the lengths to which Microsoft has historically gone to for backwards compatibility have been legendary - if decades-old internal corporate apps for which the source was lost 10 years ago don't work on the latest Windows, they don't get all that sweet upgrade license revenue. It's their bread and butter.