... and sometimes it shows.

It's rather frustrating that Apple is abandoning Classic with the new intel Macs.

Before then, Apple had relatively good backward compatibility, with many old 68K programs from System 7 still working in Classic.

However, hardware drivers have poor backward compatibility on the Mac - even from old versions of OS X - and this is very annoying, particularly for drivers that aren't updated for 10.4.

Apple could definitely do a better job maintaining compatibility layers for older drivers and for Classic applications!!

If Apple can move forward with a new generation operating system (OSX) while at the same time supporting applications written in the old one (OS9 and earlier) with Classic, what's stopping Microsoft from doing the same thing?

I mean, if they're gonna copy OSX with Vista they should go all the way and copy Classic too.

... but then..... that might make sense.... so forget what I said.

Prof. Rosenblum isn't merely a Stanford computer scientist - he's founder of virtualization firm VMware, which offers an alternative technology for backward compatibility: a virtual machine monitor which enables you to keep running your old operating system!

Incidentally, Macrumors.com reports that 10.5 "Leopard" will include virtualization technology....

"Apple "does not have to work with the massive business ecosystem of Microsoft," the reporters noted."

And when Apple does have to work with a business ecosystem, system administrators are often left the ones to figure out how to make it work. It's frustrating, but I'd still rather be on this side of the fence.

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Wings wrote:
If Apple can move forward with a new generation operating system (OSX) while at the same time supporting applications written in the old one (OS9 and earlier) with Classic, what's stopping Microsoft from doing the same thing?

I mean, if they're gonna copy OSX with Vista they should go all the way and copy Classic too.

... but then..... that might make sense.... so forget what I said.

1 word... games.

With a Munsian "Haw! Haw!" I must laugh at these Redmond business types. To get anything like OSX working on a windows box, they'll have break radically from business as usual at MS. Back to the drawing board boys! Once Vista is out is will be compared with X and will be hailed as a mockish imitator.

When I saw that they have a half dozen flavors of the software set with differing price stuctures, I knew this delay would happen. By comparison, you buy OSX you get OSX regardless of who you are. No extra deluxe graphics version,business version, home advanced, regular or fricken unleaded. These MS dudes are all about the money, not the user.

Apple should ramp up it's advertising, I'm sure they could land a whole lot of converts in the lead time now given them. Who knows, maybe the Mac could see a double digit user base in 2007.

Apple doesn't need to ramp up it's advertising it needs to ram up it's production of computers. Just start making them. Also they need to speed up the introduction of any new computers to before the holiday season. Introduce new computers early November. That would really entice people to buy a new machine, since hey won't have a new Windows PC to buy.

The Microsoft's business ecosystem needs something like "The healthy ecosystem initiative".

Hide the children.

Backwards compatibility is not the devil. Personally, I get kind of sick of half my software breaking every year when Apple updates OS X. Apple could certainly do better in this regard. It's ironic that OS X maintains better compatibility with System 7~OS 9 software than it does with software for older versions of OS X!

That said, Microsoft could certainly do a lot better, too. They'll have to dump the baggage eventually. If not now, when? Vista has turned from a real Windows revolution into "XP+". Most of the features that made it interesting (the new file system and graphics layer, for example) aren't even making it to the initial release.

So what IS making it to the initial release? The ability to run current software. NEWS FLASH: I can run current software currently! I don't need a new OS for that!

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David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, told the reporters. "That's why a company like Apple has such an easier time of innovation."

Well, isn't that strange--Yoffie is the same idiot that two years ago was convinced the jig was up for Apple:

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/archives/000052.php

So now Apple thrives because, 'MS is screwing up and, anyway, Apple has it easy?' Uh, sure prof. Whatever you say...

I can't believe that Harvard continues to employ him.

"Backward compatibility" is a euphemism for "If we raise the barriers to entry our customers will find alternative operating systems more attractive.

Vista IMHO is now more of a marketing initiative than a new OS. This time around enterprise and retail customers may not be willing to pick up the tab.

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Anonymous wrote:
Apple doesn't need to ramp up it's advertising it needs to ram up it's production of computers. Just start making them. Also they need to speed up the introduction of any new computers to before the holiday season. Introduce new computers early November. That would really entice people to buy a new machine, since hey won't have a new Windows PC to buy.

I don't see this. Windows people are not going to switch to OS X and go an entirely new (to them) platform just because XP will be in use another year. A lot of windows users don't want vista anyway, if their whining is to be believed.

PC sales *might* be slightly affected (although I don't think consumers care as much as analysts whether they are using XP or Vista) but that's not going to move people to the mac. It just won't. People who are switching are doing so for other reasons and I don't see this affecting that trend noticeably.

-nt-

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deasys wrote:
I can't believe that Harvard continues to employ him.

I can. I've worked with Ivy Leaguers.

Backward compatibility is not an impossible dream for operating systems. I bet you could find X Window System code from 1990 that would compile and run on Mac OS X or on Linux.

Windows, conversely, exists as a bloated and growing raft of overlapping and inconsistent APIs -- you just can't get from there to anywhere. Microsoft's gamble with that approach has been to lock in APPLICATION DEVELOPERS, and use those to trap the users.

Now, however, the lack of security and barriers to innovation have nearly reached a critical mass.

Now Microsoft is forced to make weak extensions of .NET to Mac and Linux in order to draw defectors back into the Windows co-dependency system.

I hope it fails, but Microsoft never let serving its customers stand in the way of making a buck through monopolist business practices.

My wife and I graduated from Harvard (college) together then married. As our kids have neared college age, we have been against them applying there -- ego is as detrimental to intelligence and discovery as any other prejudice, and Harvard's got a monopoly on it. So I'm not surprised by this stupidity, either. But the other faculties are noticeably nuttier than the B-school's!

People are cutting Microsoft too much slack when they credit Windows' problems with its need to be backwards compatible.

Backwards compatibility has nothing to do with it.

The problem is, Microsoft is run and staffed by the most incompetent twits in the computer business.

You know how you make a good backwards-compatible OS? You preserve, then refine the old code. Refine it to the point where the old instructions become nothing but pointers to new code that performs the same functions, only faster and more efficient and with extended abbilities.

If Microsoft had more sense than a handfull of birdshit, DOS and Windows would've been merged into one cohesive OS, with a modular design so backwards compatibility would be no more complicated than updating a list of pointers to point at new code.

Instead of the 50-million line nightmare they have on their hands, which is of their own doing, because they are indeed total and complete morons.

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Mikuro wrote:
Backwards compatibility is not the devil. Personally, I get kind of sick of half my software breaking every year when Apple updates OS X. Apple could certainly do better in this regard. It's ironic that OS X maintains better compatibility with System 7~OS 9 software than it does with software for older versions of OS X!

Half? Half? Breaking? If you're going to use hyperbole, please be more precise or at least provide examples.

I've used OS X since the alpha 10.0 release. Some of my now-no-longer-used OS 9 stuff didn't work in OS X, but that's to be expected, inasmuch as not everything works under Rosetta. But I've virtually had nothing not work (what a great language English is!) from one release to another.

There are two notable exceptions: Disk Warrior and Retrospect - neither of these most important apps worked immediately under Tiger. But they got fixed up quickly enough. I hope for the same for their Universal Binary releases... Nevertheless this isn't a problem with OS X per se.

Scotty said it best in a line from a Star Trek movie, In Search for Spock. "The more complicated the plumming, the easier it is to stop up the drain"! That now equals VIsta.