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Corrolay for techies: ... or why we go out of our way to make users throw away perfectly working things. I still remember the shift from Windows XP to Vista. M
by xg15 4y ago
Corrolay for techies: ... or why we go out of our way to make users throw away perfectly working things.
I still remember the shift from Windows XP to Vista. Many users where absolutely uninterested in updating: They were perfectly fine with the amount of features Windows XP offered, had gotten used to the UI, had set up their system to work well for them, etc. Microsoft had to run a sustained campaign of advocacy, nag-screens, and end of support to bring those users to update.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoXP is too porous to safely use today apart from offline or very narrow usage. If it were hardened and hardware didn't evolve too much then it'd be fine to keep using. Reality is that hardware and the web require a certain amount of change in the OS. And OS vendors cannot afford to support old versions indefinitely.
- agilob 4y ago>And OS vendors cannot afford to support old versions indefinitely. So instead they built Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and 11?
- rolenthedeep 4y agoWhy support one OS indefinitely when you can support five concurrently for a decade each!
- paulryanrogers 4y agoXP's architecture had to be replaced or it would have held things back. Vista may not have been as ambitious as Longhorn but it was an improvement. Not saying every major release was justified, only that we couldn't have stayed on XP forever. Or at least not without sacrificing some improvements and innovation. Windows 11 though seems entirely arbitrary, especially since TPM requirements appear inconsistent and capricious.
- maximus-decimus 4y agoheld back how? at least it had a working search bar. Seriously, the only improvement I can think of since XP is the gpu resource monitor in the Task Manager. I think maybe the search bar worked better in Windows 7 before getting broken in 10?
- antisthenes 4y agoProper 64-bit support in Vista and later versions? Also out of the box support for TRIM and a few other goodies. XP --> Vista/7 was the biggest jump in terms of functionality, since it also happened to coincide with massive performance gains in hardware.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoIIRC the driver model and general security improved in fundamental ways. Some could've probably been back ported but not every improvement. Consider that even XP wasn't the same from first release until SP3. It was really two or three OS's, just with fewer user facing changes than Vista and later major releases.
- nikau 4y agoWindows 10 search is much better if you turn off web searches. But of course Microsoft being Microsoft require you to modify some obscure registry key to do that.
- agilob 4y ago>XP's architecture had to be replaced or it would have held things back. Same can be said about Linux, but the kernel is evolving internally without being replaced. With enough eBPF modules Linux can act like a microkernel or even driven kernel.
- xg15 4y agoNot completely wrong, but you could justify all kinds of planned obsolescence with that reasoning: "Sure the device technically still works, but it's too costly for us to bear the maintenance burden, so we have to brick it"
- paulryanrogers 4y agoI don't mean to excuse every such decision, certainly not Windows 11. Rather I just don't think it's realistic to expect any major OS version to be eternal and hardened, unless it's a niche use.
- poorlyknit 4y agoI don't see why they couldn't have just kept the UI though.
- jasonpeacock 4y agoIt's different when old things require ongoing support. Your old mixer will keep working without ongoing support, but software generally requires continued updates for security patches, bug fixes, OS updates, new HW, etc. Thus, there's a cost _to the vendor/mfr_ for older software that doesn't exist for older appliances, tools, clothes, etc.