[X4U] "Backwards Compatibility"

[Zane H. Healy]

At 5:20 AM -0500 6/19/08, Eugene wrote:
>3. Your older software/hardware combination eventually dies.
>Old hardware will eventually die, and new replacement hardware
>may not be compatible with old software.  Old software may die
>of incompatabilities with newer software (e.g. new OS) or newer
>hardware (see above).  Old lifeforms die and give rise to newer
>lifeforms as the ecosystem evolves and changes.  ADB, parallel,
>and serial ports died and gave way to USB.  SCSI (mostly) and
>Parallel ATA died and gave way to Firewire and Serial ATA.  And
>Mac OS 9 died and gave way to Mac OS X.
>
>Don't outlive the next generation.  Bad karma.

Tell me, which part of the hardware/software industry gives you your 
pay check.  You're one of two people here really trying to convince 
people they need to go out and waste their money.

There are ways that Apple could insure those of us with older 
software can still run it, they've just chosen to ignore them.  Why 
is it I can run software written for a PDP-11 or VAX in the 70's in a 
legal and supported fashion on an Intel Mac, yet I can't run 
ClarisDraw which was written in the mid-90's in a supported fashion? 
The PDP-11 and VAX are minicomputers produced by DEC (i.e. something 
varying in size between a very large tower to something that fills a 
room), yet ClarisDraw is owned by Apple.

As for your BS about hardware, I'm typing this on an Apple ADB 
Extended II Keyboard hooked up to my G5 2x2, and as far as I know 
I'll still be able to use this keyboard on an Intel Mac when I 
finally get one.  My printer is an HP 5MP which is even older.  On my 
WinXP box, I use a keyboard that came with my 486/33 in '91.  These 
are examples that show why everything now has built in obsolescence.

While my G5 is my primary system, my secondary system is an Alpha 
running OpenVMS, the hardware on it mostly dates back to the 90's, 
and some of the software is far older than than any of my Mac 
software, yet I'm running the current version of OpenVMS.  Some 
companies really do understand that backwards compatibility is 
important.

Your comments show what is wrong with society today.

     Zane

P.S. my thoughts are my own, and I do not speak for my employer.


-- 
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet)           | Classic Computer Collector |
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|          PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum.         |
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