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Windows XP still supports 16-bit Windows 3.x applications. Sun's backward compatibility guarantee goes back to SPARC7 (circa 1987) which was already 32-bit. Wi
by briansmith 17y ago
Windows XP still supports 16-bit Windows 3.x applications. Sun's backward compatibility guarantee goes back to SPARC7 (circa 1987) which was already 32-bit. Windows 3.0 was 16-bit and was released in 1990. I don't know about IBM but I imagine the situation is similar. Linus didn't even start Linux until 1991. Desktop Mac OS X was released in 2001. Microsoft's compatibility achievement there is much more impressive to me.
AFAICT, the primary reason for this compatibility mode is to run IE6 side-by-side with IE8, so that corporations don't have to upgrade their web apps all at once. Neither Linux nor Mac OS X offers that feature for free; you can virtualize XP in Linux and Mac OS X but you don't get a free XP license with them.