4 ms·

"Planned obsolesence"... I get the desire to bash Microsoft at every possible opportunity here, but one thing Microsoft did better than most companies was backw

"Planned obsolesence"... I get the desire to bash Microsoft at every possible opportunity here, but one thing Microsoft did better than most companies was backward compatibility and the ability to run legacy programs / maintain API compatibility going back years. Windows 3.x -> 95/98 legacy (even 16bit) apps continued to work. There are APIs even in Win10/etc that support old apps. I don't think Microsoft can be one of those "orchestrating planned obsolesence". This comment is particularly inaccurate. There are things that are valid for complaining about Microsoft, but "planned obsolesence"? No.

coldtea 3y ago
Maybe not "planned obsolesence", but they do however have a "API incontinence". This is mostly driven from a desire to sell new crap to enterprises. So they rewrite everything and churn out new crap every few years, new APIs, new frameworks, new "this is the way to do X now" and so on. So, them maintaining backwards compatibility for the old stuff is half of the picture. Developers and (especially enteprise customers) are still pushed to adopt some new thing with alarming frequency, and stuff that works perfectly well gets thrown out for the new hotness. This leads to a rat race to keep up with the latest stuff, no updating of old stuff with new functionality, and so on.
- jmspring 3y ago
  Explain to me how win32 APIs from the 90s were still a thing on win mobile in the mid 2000s? On the enterprise front, yes they probably want to push but you ignore how often there are Windows EOL announcements where things are extended for large "enterprises" including government and large customers.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >Explain to me how win32 APIs from the 90s were still a thing on win mobile in the mid 2000s? Not sure what you're asking. I didn't say they kill and stop supporting old APIs. I said they keeping putting out and pushing for "new hotness" APIs/frameworks, forgetting their old APIs/frameworks with an alarming rate. A 20 year old API still working is good. A 20 year old API properly maintained and updated, instead of having several new APIs/frameworks introduced and killed in between, with like the 5th "doomed to be replaced soon" API/framework now pushed as "THE" way to do things, is even better.
    - jmspring 3y ago
      Planned obsolesence was mentioned, legacy APIs being maintained and old programs continuing to run... that's not obsoleting anything.
      - coldtea 3y ago
        Yeah, I know. Which is why I already wrote in my original comment "Maybe [they do] not [have] "planned obsolesence", but they do however have a "API incontinence".
- esafak 3y ago
  That's the point: to keep the competition busy trying to keep up with all their changes. Their slogan once was "We set the standards".
wkat4242 3y ago
True but it's changing now. Now that they're pivoting to selling subscriptions instead of software. The windows 11 requirements were arbitrary and way too heavy. Especially considering unsupported machines work fine if you use a workaround.
- vintermann 3y ago
  I work for a company that relies on the MS cloud for virtualized environments, to let our still popular (And profitable) legacy app run in an environment it's more or less used to, but still be in "the cloud" so we can manage things for our customers, keep them on mostly the same version etc. It costs a fortune.
  - walterbell 3y ago
    Do other cloud services support virtualization of older versions of Windows?
vintermann 3y ago
Well, they did, up until a point. Then they got into the habit of pushing technologies hard, then abandoning them. I don't think you can run activeX or Silverlight stuff very well without effort today.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  Can you run Flash? What about a Mac OS 9 executable on a modern Mac? What about a Python 2.7 script? Why is it reasonable to insist that MS allow something to run easily that is over a decade old that was notoriously insecure when it was in use? Are they an exception?
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
The planned obsolescence isn't the third party software, it's that version of Windows itself. The new version comes with a new version of some APIs, which new software starts to use, and now you can't run that software on the version you have. They have backwards compatibility but not forwards compatibility. Then someone finds a security vulnerability in the old version but they never patch it, and neither can anyone else because of copyright, so now you can't even keep using it the way you always had without falling victim to their inability to get it right the first time and refusal to either go back and fix it or release the source code so someone else can do it. So just use the new version which still works with all your old software, you say. But the old version didn't spy on you and the new one does.
- Melatonic 3y ago
  They do updates for pretty long and a lot of the OS you can trick into updating far longer. Windows 10 LTSC IOT for example is going to get security updates for a looong time and has all the bloatware and spyware stripped out.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > They do updates for pretty long and a lot of the OS you can trick into updating far longer. "You can trick into updating for far longer" is supposed to be an argument that it isn't planned obsolescence? > Windows 10 LTSC IOT for example is going to get security updates for a looong time and has all the bloatware and spyware stripped out. Because there is a market segment which is less tolerant of this kind of abuse. But when John goes to the store to buy a new laptop because the one he had with Windows XP on it is too slow to run any variant of Windows 10, that edition generally isn't what it comes with. Why not? Is there a customer desire for spyware and shorter support lifetimes, or is there an abuse of naive customers going on here by default?
Melatonic 3y ago
Seriously.

coldtea 3y ago

Maybe not "planned obsolesence", but they do however have a "API incontinence". This is mostly driven from a desire to sell new crap to enterprises. So they rewrite everything and churn out new crap every few years, new APIs, new frameworks, new "this is the way to do X now" and so on. So, them maintaining backwards compatibility for the old stuff is half of the picture. Developers and (especially enteprise customers) are still pushed to adopt some new thing with alarming frequency, and stuff that works perfectly well gets thrown out for the new hotness. This leads to a rat race to keep up with the latest stuff, no updating of old stuff with new functionality, and so on.

jmspring 3y ago
Explain to me how win32 APIs from the 90s were still a thing on win mobile in the mid 2000s? On the enterprise front, yes they probably want to push but you ignore how often there are Windows EOL announcements where things are extended for large "enterprises" including government and large customers.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Explain to me how win32 APIs from the 90s were still a thing on win mobile in the mid 2000s? Not sure what you're asking. I didn't say they kill and stop supporting old APIs. I said they keeping putting out and pushing for "new hotness" APIs/frameworks, forgetting their old APIs/frameworks with an alarming rate. A 20 year old API still working is good. A 20 year old API properly maintained and updated, instead of having several new APIs/frameworks introduced and killed in between, with like the 5th "doomed to be replaced soon" API/framework now pushed as "THE" way to do things, is even better.
  - jmspring 3y ago
    Planned obsolesence was mentioned, legacy APIs being maintained and old programs continuing to run... that's not obsoleting anything.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Yeah, I know. Which is why I already wrote in my original comment "Maybe [they do] not [have] "planned obsolesence", but they do however have a "API incontinence".
esafak 3y ago
That's the point: to keep the competition busy trying to keep up with all their changes. Their slogan once was "We set the standards".

wkat4242 3y ago

True but it's changing now. Now that they're pivoting to selling subscriptions instead of software. The windows 11 requirements were arbitrary and way too heavy. Especially considering unsupported machines work fine if you use a workaround.

vintermann 3y ago
I work for a company that relies on the MS cloud for virtualized environments, to let our still popular (And profitable) legacy app run in an environment it's more or less used to, but still be in "the cloud" so we can manage things for our customers, keep them on mostly the same version etc. It costs a fortune.
- walterbell 3y ago
  Do other cloud services support virtualization of older versions of Windows?

vintermann 3y ago

Well, they did, up until a point. Then they got into the habit of pushing technologies hard, then abandoning them. I don't think you can run activeX or Silverlight stuff very well without effort today.

Eisenstein 3y ago
Can you run Flash? What about a Mac OS 9 executable on a modern Mac? What about a Python 2.7 script? Why is it reasonable to insist that MS allow something to run easily that is over a decade old that was notoriously insecure when it was in use? Are they an exception?

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

The planned obsolescence isn't the third party software, it's that version of Windows itself. The new version comes with a new version of some APIs, which new software starts to use, and now you can't run that software on the version you have. They have backwards compatibility but not forwards compatibility. Then someone finds a security vulnerability in the old version but they never patch it, and neither can anyone else because of copyright, so now you can't even keep using it the way you always had without falling victim to their inability to get it right the first time and refusal to either go back and fix it or release the source code so someone else can do it. So just use the new version which still works with all your old software, you say. But the old version didn't spy on you and the new one does.

Melatonic 3y ago
They do updates for pretty long and a lot of the OS you can trick into updating far longer. Windows 10 LTSC IOT for example is going to get security updates for a looong time and has all the bloatware and spyware stripped out.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > They do updates for pretty long and a lot of the OS you can trick into updating far longer. "You can trick into updating for far longer" is supposed to be an argument that it isn't planned obsolescence? > Windows 10 LTSC IOT for example is going to get security updates for a looong time and has all the bloatware and spyware stripped out. Because there is a market segment which is less tolerant of this kind of abuse. But when John goes to the store to buy a new laptop because the one he had with Windows XP on it is too slow to run any variant of Windows 10, that edition generally isn't what it comes with. Why not? Is there a customer desire for spyware and shorter support lifetimes, or is there an abuse of naive customers going on here by default?

Melatonic 3y ago

Seriously.