[X4U] "Backwards Compatibility"

[Zane H. Healy]

At 5:26 PM +1000 6/18/08, Christopher Collins wrote:
>On 18/06/2008, at 1:17 PM, Zane H. Healy wrote:
>
>>   Backwards compatibility should be any OS vendors primary objective.
>>
>
>What a load of absolute crap this line is!
>
>It is "backwards compatibility" that always limits innovation.

You seem to feel rather strongly about this, tell me what software 
company do you work for?

>Is 10.5 better than 10.4? Yes, I think it is. I find it much more 
>reliable and much easier to use. So I checked my hardware and found, 
>yes it will run 10.5.

My wife's MacBook runs 10.5, and it is no where near as stable as my 
G5 running 10.4.11, or it was running 10.4.x.  I'm not ready to run 
10.5 when my son logging out of his account is enough to crash the 
laptop!

>If you don't want the facilities of 10.5, then you have no problems. 
>Stick with 10.4.11 and be happy.
>
>If you want 10.5 and your hardware won't handle it, then decide how 
>badly you need those features. If the need is great enough you will 
>upgrade.
>
>If you still don't want to upgrade, then stay with 10.4.11. And 
>don't keep complaining that Apple should keep limiting innovation by 
>staying "backwards compatible"

I'm complaining about the lack of backward compatibility and 10.5 
just plain being unstable.  As for their lack of backwards 
compatibility lets not forget that Apple's failure to live up to its 
promisees are causing both it and Adobe problems.

>If they had stayed "backwards compatible" when they moved into the 
>phone market, we would never have had the iPhone.

This makes absolutely no sense.

>If you don't want to move from your "beloved" Claris Draw, then 
>stick with your old hardware and operating system. Don't limit my 
>usage of the new facilities of 10.5 by forcing Apple to keep Classic 
>Mode just to support 1 program for 1 person.

Don't you get it yet, I'm not the only one that still runs old 
software that hasn't been updated, and in most cases will never be 
updated.  Some of this software does things that no other software 
can do.

Face it the world needs to change, we can't keep up with this insane 
cycle of buy, use for a year, and then buy a replacement nonsense 
that has been going on.  There is a reason that the corporations are 
forcing such cycles on us, it is so that they can make more money. 
Trust me, I've sat in on enough corporate meetings to know that 
they're trying to shorten the cycle, and that is wrong.

Backwards compatibility doesn't have to mean something like "Classic 
Mode", I'd be happy with a nicely implemented and commercially 
supported emulator, especially if it allowed me to choose which 
version of the OS I ran on it.  As it stands, I'll end up using one 
of the non-commercial, emulators out there once 10.5 stabilizes.  I 
really do want features in 10.5, and trust me, and emulator will run 
my ancient software better than "Classic Mode".

Zane



-- 
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet)           | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
|     Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing,    |
|          PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum.         |
|                http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/               |