And how much they tolerate it, as it's so embedded in their engineering culture and I imagine "backwards compatibility" is drilled into your face when you start working on Windows at MS.
It's not easy to get into the mindset of fixing every problem a 3rd party app creates.
Some will say Apple is offloading tech-debt onto client apps, but Microsoft is allowing client appts to offload tech-debt onto itself, and it's big enough to take that burden on so its users can still use the stuff they bought.
I dunno, sometimes I hate having to do it but it's all about user/dev experience and if you're optimising for your own employees you're making it worse for everyone else who makes your OS/machinery worth buying. There's got to be some compromise, coz it sounds like if you buy into Apple then you're SOL if they can't be bothered supporting your hardware.
Which, additionally, must contradict their environmental aims. It's not good for the environment if upgrading an OS means you throw away your printers and scanners and buy compatible ones.
As a developer who strongly advocates for and strives to maintain backwards compatibility whenever possible (and even when it isn't so easy...), I can say that it's unfortunately something the vast majority of (younger) developers today don't even think about, much less care for. Perhaps they just haven't experienced stability nor noticed it enough in their daily lives, because all they seem to care about is "new and shiny" and rewriting things constantly.
I have written various (Windows) utilities over the years, and some are over 20 years old now and I use them every day. They worked on Win95, they still work through to Win10. They're all tiny single binaries that require no installation, start immediately, and are extremely responsive and low on memory usage. Ironically, it's almost impossible to do that with a "modern" toolchain now, and I'm not even sure if something like that would've ever been possible with the Mac. To me, the idea that backwards compatibility is a "burden" is absurd. Constant churn is a burden. If I had to go and "fix" all my utilities every few years because a new OS broke something that was working before, I would have less time for actual new developments. Instead I can continue to use them and write other things as the needs arise, instead of wasting the effort redoing things that should've still been working. Just "leaving well enough alone" is a big part of it.
The kind of simple utilities you are talking about would have also been pretty easy to maintain/port from OPENSTEP in 1996 through to current MacOS. Apple's offered pretty good source-level compatibility for the basic stuff, and an easy migration path for tooling. Recompiling something every few years isn't a "constant churn" sort of burden.
> There's a lot of stuff out there that's not maintained, but is still useful.
I can't see how this is Apple's problem. Holding up development of a platform and technical progression generally for unmaintaned software is not a good working model for anyone, no matter how useful it is.
> So "recompiling every few years" is a pretty big burden.
As is "supporting everything ever implemented in perpituity"...
is not a good working model for anyone, no matter how useful it is
WTF!? You've just perfectly illustrated the attitude that's making technology worse for everyone.
What are computers for? "To control and force users to consume mindlessly" might be an accurate depiction of reality today, but that's not what they were originally invented for. Computers were intended to assist people. As the early (1930s-40s) promotional material would say, "to come to the aid of mankind". The whole point of a computer is to be useful to its users, so arguing against that is just nonsense. This discussion item is full of other comments stating exactly what sort of work they use a computer for, and how they are being affected by useless changes.
Most people take it for granted just how stable a lot of other things --- also invented to help them --- they use on a daily basis are. Imagine if every few years, your toilet, sink, bathtub, light switches, power sockets, door and window handles/locks, lightbulb sockets, and home appliance controls changed in such a way that you had to completely relearn how to use them and without some functionality they had before, and all for totally BS reasons like "development of a platform and technical progression".
As is "supporting everything ever implemented in perpituity"...
>What are computers for? "To control and force users to consume mindlessly"
Nonsense. I never suggested that. What I am suggesting is that whining about progress (especially when it has been known to have been deprecated for at least the last 10 years!) and layering technical debt on top of technical debt is stupid. I do agree that somethings don’t need to change, but are absurd, not to mention inaccurate. The many types of different light fittings for example are evolving. Somewhat more slowly than computing, I grant you. The same is true for locks and light switches are being developed too. Your comment about home appliances is By far the most ludicrous. I do take issue with your notion that things in Catalina have changed to the extent that they need to be relearned. Bullshit.
> If I had to go and "fix" all my utilities every few years* because a new OS broke something that was working before, I would have less time for actual new developments.
>There's got to be some compromise, coz it sounds like if you buy into Apple then you're SOL if they can't be bothered supporting your hardware.
I think part of the idea is (and how they see it), if you buy into Apple, you should have enough spare money to upgrade your hardware as needed. This sucks for us which are not exactly affluent, but that's part of the thing. Apple never tried to maximize affordability or expenses.
(Though in some cases, they have been the more affordable of the bunch, e.g. when the iPad was announced, it took about 2 years for competitive machines to reach price parity. Or now, e.g. the newly announced MS earbuds are more expensive than airpods).
It's not a platform for long term support and maximum bang for the buck, it's a platform for user convenience ("it just works, mostly"), inter-operation ("things -phone, earbuds, speaker, watch, etc- just work together, mostly"), and cohesiveness ("things have a unified vision, mostly"), plus polish (thinking some things more through in their design -- not always though, e.g. BS MBPr keyboard).
I use "mostly" above in the sense that it's not obviously perfect (and some areas far from it). But the tradeoff is in the areas mentioned above.
It's not easy to get into the mindset of fixing every problem a 3rd party app creates.
Some will say Apple is offloading tech-debt onto client apps, but Microsoft is allowing client appts to offload tech-debt onto itself, and it's big enough to take that burden on so its users can still use the stuff they bought.
I dunno, sometimes I hate having to do it but it's all about user/dev experience and if you're optimising for your own employees you're making it worse for everyone else who makes your OS/machinery worth buying. There's got to be some compromise, coz it sounds like if you buy into Apple then you're SOL if they can't be bothered supporting your hardware.
Which, additionally, must contradict their environmental aims. It's not good for the environment if upgrading an OS means you throw away your printers and scanners and buy compatible ones.