[sgjohnson]

You can still find applications written for Windows 3.1 in the latest builds of Windows 11. Something regarding database drivers if I recall correctly.

Now imagine if you could get rid of all that legacy crap to make it work in the first place. Microsoft CAN’T do that, because the entire premise of Windows is backwards compatability.

Apple? They don’t care. Killing 32bit apps? Just make an announcement saying that in 2 major macOS releases, macOS won’t be able to run 32 bit apps. It cuts down bloat, and it cuts down on the potential attack surfaces for malicious actors.

Obviously just about everyone would agree that Windows 1 -> 7 was progress. I don’t think you’ll find too many people who’ll say the same about Windows 7 -> 11.

[wk_end]

> Now imagine if you could get rid of all that legacy crap to make it work in the first place.

What would be the consequence of this? What harm does this do? Would it be worth Spotify and Slack breaking when I upgrade my OS?

[jojobas]

> Now imagine if you could get rid of all that legacy crap to make it work in the first place.

Yeah, and someone will wake from the dead and rewrite all the programs that run the world, written 20-40 years ago, that are to a large degree perfectly working under these compatibility layers.

You should be eternally grateful to MS for dedicating tons of money and some of its best people to maintaining backwards compatibility.

Apple can only afford it because pretty much nothing critical ever ran on macos.

[badsectoracula]

> Now imagine if you could get rid of all that legacy crap to make it work in the first place.

That's easy to imagine: people would have zero reason to use Windows.

[FireBeyond]

I mean macOS Settings were decidedly schizophrenic until quite recently. Audio MIDI Setup last got a version update in 2017.

AirPort Utility? Apple disbanded that team in 2016. There hadn't been a new AirPort since 2013.