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by dahauns 2322 days ago
I haven't forgotten anything, I just fail to see the relevance to this discussion. (68k? Really? That one's been dead for 14 years. And what is with you and NT on PPC? You really want to start comparing a 25 year old, short-lived, ultra-niche side version no one bought or even wrote software for with the "mainline"?)

I think you missed the entire point of my posting, i.e. that even outside the architecture changes long term compatibility was never even near the same level (and different arch often not even the culprit). Carbon being available doesn't help you a thing when old software still doesn't work.

1 comments

If you are complaining that you can’t run 25 year old Mac software on an x86 Mac, the only option is for Apple to ship MacOS with a 68K emulator and a PPC emulator. The first version of MacOS that ran natively on x86 came out in 2006.

Yes I realize that PPC Macs came out in 1994. But they required a 68K emulator because even parts of MacOS were 68K.

>If you are complaining that you can’t run 25 year old Mac software on an x86 Mac

But I ain't. I'm arguing that for vast stretches of Mac OS/OS X/macOS history, even 5 year old software has been a gamble.

There were a few breaking change epics in MacOS history.

There were three major breaking changes for MacOS.

- If you bought the x86 version of software in 2006. It would potentially work until 2019 when Apple dropped 32 support.

- If you bought the first first version of OS X PPC software in 2001, it could potentially run until July 2011 with the release of 10.7.

- If you bought a classic MacOS app, it could run from pessimistically from 1992 with the release of System 7 to 2006 with the introduction of the first x86 Macs.

Yes, we already talked about this. The keyword here is "potentially", which I'd swap with "theoretically".