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by frik
3771 days ago
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It depends. With rather new still evolving ecosystems, every update is welcome. Also the security updates are important for OS and browsers. But with stagnating platforms, like Windows where tipping point was Windows XP (or Windows 7), it goes downhill with every update since then, the bubble bursted, now the user is the product, and your files get screened and searched by the platform owners. You can run software from 1985 (Win 1.0) on Windows 7 (32bit, but it's just an arbitrary limitation to prevent 16bit applications from running on 64bit OS, the competition can do that see Wine and ReactOS). Almost every developer already moved on to the web or emerging new platforms like the market share dominating Android or the second most popular one, iOS/OSX. End users are smart, they don't buy into old antique burned platforms of yesteryear anymore. They application landscape is changing as well. And for everyone who is still happy with their old software, there is little reason to update, and it won't get better on sinking platforms. |
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Another thing I'd point out - Microsoft almost backed themselves into a corner worshiping at the shrine of backwards compatibility - to the point it was difficult to move their platform or their ecosystems software forward to use more modern, more secure and more reliable methods - so unless you've been very forward looking from the start (see IBM System Z) there is a real, fundamental and painful engineering cost to maintain a line to yesterday without great sacrifices to tomorrow.
I'd argue that the PC (be it Windows, OSX or Linux) is here to stay for the foreseeable future - it may not be the platform for everyone - but for many workloads and applications the web, or mobile simply will not do.