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> when they did it right, in Windows NT 3.51, the users with legacy 16 bit applications screamed I mean, i don't think there is anything "right" involved from
by badsectoracula 2y ago
> when they did it right, in Windows NT 3.51, the users with legacy 16 bit applications screamed
I mean, i don't think there is anything "right" involved from the users' perspective when all they get is the programs they want to use their computer with becoming broken :-P.
In general people do not use computers for the sake of their noise nor OSes for the sake of clicking around (subjectively) pretty bitmaps, they use computers and OSes to run the programs they want, anything beneath the programs are a means not an end.
(and often the programs themselves aren't an end either - though exceptions, like entertainment software/games, do exist - but a means too, after all people don't use -say- Word to click on the (subjectively again) pretty icons, they use it to write documents)
- Dalewyn 2y ago>anything beneath the programs are a means not an end. This. Absolute backwards compatibility is why Windows (particularly Win32) and x86 continue to dominate the desktop market. Users want to run their software and get stuff done, and they aren't taking "your software is too old" for an answer.
- justsomehnguy 2y agoYep. I finally abandoned CorelPHOTO-PAINT 3.0 only when I moved to x64 Vista in 2008.
- M95D 2y agoWhat did you use instead?
- justsomehnguy 2y agoSettled on Paint.NET. I honestly tried to use GIMP multiple times but it's always felt.. unnatural. https://www.getpaint.net/ https://www.getpaint.net/ NB: but IrfanView is still my goto picture viewer.
- account42 2y agoUnfortunately no OS so far cares about backwards compatibility for users. Everyone thinks it is ok to force whatever new UI and workflows their monkeys dreamed up on the userbase.
- badsectoracula 2y agoMy desktop (Linux running Window Maker) looks and feels more or less the same today as it did in 1997 - years before i even learned about it :-P. If anything, bugs aside, all changes since then have been for the best IMO. Of course that's mainly possible because of how modular the Linux desktop stack is.
- Animats 2y agoThat may have been Dave Cutler's doing. Cutler came from DEC and did the OS for the VAX. (Not UNIX, DEC's own OS). When DEC went from 16 to 32 bits, the VAX was made hardware-capable of booting up in PDP-11 mode. Nobody used that feature, because the result was an overpriced PDP-11. So it seemed reasonable to think that, once the 386 was out, everybody would run 32-bit software on new hardware. That did not happen. 16-bit applications hung on for a decade.