[Altay-]

>But breaking backwards compatibility is just not something customers will put up with.

There's no reason to believe this to be an immutable law going forward for much longer. With more and more going into the browser & cloud, how much is really left on the client side to be backwards compatable with these days?

The first thing I do when I reformat is install chrome, login, and sync my Google Account. I have all my important documents on Google Drive, a full office suite in Google Docs, all my bookmarks, account logins, etc.

[pjmlp]

Many of us don't live in the browser.

Personally for me the web is HTML + CSS, for everything else there is a native application, even though I have done my share of web application projects.

I also don't put my private data in the hands of strangers.

Also do know lots of people that think like I do.

[krylon]

> With more and more going into the browser & cloud, how much is really left on the client side to be backwards compatable with these days?

For desktops/laptops and mobile phones, this may be true. For embedded device (where a lot of ARM chips end up) it is not an option, usually.

Likewise, on Windows, there is a huge amount of third-party software that is, for better or worse, tied to the CPU architecture. And for a fair amount of that software, vendors are either unwilling to port it to a new CPU or have stopped supporting the software altogether (or have gone out of business). Consider the sad fate of Windows RT. Windows on low-end ARM devices might have been sweet (as far as Windows goes), but if the only piece of software it runs is IE/Edge and Office, it is not terribly useful.