By: Jukka Larja (roskakori2006.delete@this.gmail.com), July 2, 2021 11:36 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
Kester L (nobody.delete@this.nothing.com) on July 2, 2021 9:33 am wrote:
> It doesn't change the fact that the Windows software stack is fundamentally
> more ill-suited for big ISA transitions than Apple's, which at least has
> the benefit of fat multi-ISA binaries from MacOS/iOS' NeXTStep heritage.
I think a more important aspect than anything technical is culture: Apple is quite willing to throw old APIs away every now and then and breaking compatibility with old software. With that in mind, it doesn't really matter if their emulation for old hardware is perfect, rather than just good enough. Windows PC is expected to run anything from last 20 years and when it doesn't people are unhappy.
(Some people are also still really unhappy if a game designed for Windows 10, but offering somewhat untested Windows 7 support fails to work on Windows 7. In comparison, the fact that all of the games we published for OS X don't work anymore, has never been received with anger. It's just how things work.)
I'm not sure if backwards compatibility (on OS level) makes much financial sense these days, as most people are mostly using apps that don't care (new versions are constantly being pushed out and compatibility, or lack of it, is inside the app). Seems that so far Microsoft thinks it does.
-JLarja
> It doesn't change the fact that the Windows software stack is fundamentally
> more ill-suited for big ISA transitions than Apple's, which at least has
> the benefit of fat multi-ISA binaries from MacOS/iOS' NeXTStep heritage.
I think a more important aspect than anything technical is culture: Apple is quite willing to throw old APIs away every now and then and breaking compatibility with old software. With that in mind, it doesn't really matter if their emulation for old hardware is perfect, rather than just good enough. Windows PC is expected to run anything from last 20 years and when it doesn't people are unhappy.
(Some people are also still really unhappy if a game designed for Windows 10, but offering somewhat untested Windows 7 support fails to work on Windows 7. In comparison, the fact that all of the games we published for OS X don't work anymore, has never been received with anger. It's just how things work.)
I'm not sure if backwards compatibility (on OS level) makes much financial sense these days, as most people are mostly using apps that don't care (new versions are constantly being pushed out and compatibility, or lack of it, is inside the app). Seems that so far Microsoft thinks it does.
-JLarja
