It’s barely the second most popular OS, after Android. iOS is pretty close behind it. And yet the amount of complaints Windows gets seems to be far higher than that of Android.
Fair point, I would argue that it’s not e entirely fair to compare a mobile OS that basically eschews backwards compatibility, for a desktop OS that can still run 30 year old applications, but it’s not entirely unfair either, they’re still both OSes and lots of the complaints have nothing to do with the burden of legacy support.
Does it still run 30 year old apps? I was under the impression that a lot of DOS and Windows software from the 1990s ran better under Wine than on Windows.
This is true, especially for games. But for some reason, even though some compatibility features have been removed from windows, others still remain. Hell, if you look into System32, you can still find the dialer app from windows 95 (still with its original icon, btw!), or Windows Vista’s “bubbles” screensaver, and they still run.
Edit: this is not a windows praise, it’s a critique. Those parts are dead weight, and windows isn’t even that good at offering compatibility for old software
a mobile OS that basically eschews backwards compatibility
I have an app built for Android 4 running on my Android 15 device. It looks ugly but it works. Of course other apps will not be so lucky, but some backwards compat is absolutely there.
a desktop OS that can still run 30 year old applications
Not really, Microsoft is steadily breaking old stuff. For example lot of 10-15 year old software that was doing something hardware-related would be broken now due to driver signing changes/restrictions (e.g. WinRing0 things).
It’s barely the second most popular OS, after Android. iOS is pretty close behind it. And yet the amount of complaints Windows gets seems to be far higher than that of Android.
Fair point, I would argue that it’s not e entirely fair to compare a mobile OS that basically eschews backwards compatibility, for a desktop OS that can still run 30 year old applications, but it’s not entirely unfair either, they’re still both OSes and lots of the complaints have nothing to do with the burden of legacy support.
Does it still run 30 year old apps? I was under the impression that a lot of DOS and Windows software from the 1990s ran better under Wine than on Windows.
This is true, especially for games. But for some reason, even though some compatibility features have been removed from windows, others still remain. Hell, if you look into System32, you can still find the dialer app from windows 95 (still with its original icon, btw!), or Windows Vista’s “bubbles” screensaver, and they still run.
Edit: this is not a windows praise, it’s a critique. Those parts are dead weight, and windows isn’t even that good at offering compatibility for old software
I have an app built for Android 4 running on my Android 15 device. It looks ugly but it works. Of course other apps will not be so lucky, but some backwards compat is absolutely there.
Not really, Microsoft is steadily breaking old stuff. For example lot of 10-15 year old software that was doing something hardware-related would be broken now due to driver signing changes/restrictions (e.g. WinRing0 things).