[AnimalMuppet]

> They used to work very hard to make sure updates didn't break popular programs that used undocumented hacks.

Obsessively.

I worked for a company that sold a security auditing tool. We cared very much about which version of Windows we were running on. When Microsoft came out with the next version of Windows and to our dismay, we found out that our software recognized it as the old version.

Turns out that Microsoft had found (pre release) that the new version broke our software. It reported "unknown version" or something. So they added us to a long list of applications that, when those applications asked for what version of Windows they were running on, Windows lied and told them an earlier version.

It cost us some heartburn to work around Windows trying to be helpful to us...

[ridiculous_fish]

I frequently implemented this from the other side at Apple.

You'd be shocked at how much software enables features based on a `==` OS version check. When the OS bumps its version, the software regresses to some earlier behavior. Lying to the app is the simplest way to keep it working.