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Why Microsoft really patched XP

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Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#31

Post by mikeash »

benjaminpv wrote: post #14

>I wonder why these protections aren’t enabled by default. Because bugs exposed by a change in Windows are used to denigrate Windows, not the developer of the buggy app[1]. [1]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/12/23/45481...

Unfortunately, this sort of thing seems to snowball. MS bends over backwards to preserve backwards compatibility, so third-party vendors basically have free reign to abuse the OS, requiring MS to bend over backwards even more to accommodate them, and on and on.

Apple, for example, had much less of a problem with this even before the days of the App Store and the accompanying restrictions, because developers largely knew that if they depended on undocumented behavior there was a good chance that their app would break and Apple wouldn't fix it for them.

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#32

Post by ntakasaki »

mikeash wrote: post #31
benjaminpv wrote: post #14

>I wonder why these protections aren’t enabled by default. Because bugs exposed by a change in Windows are used to denigrate Windows, not the developer of the buggy app[1]. [1]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/12/23/45481...

Unfortunately, this sort of thing seems to snowball. MS bends over backwards to preserve backwards compatibility, so third-party vendors basically have free reign to abuse the OS, requiring MS to bend over backwards even more to accommodate them, and on and on. Apple, for example, had much less of a problem with this even before the days of the App Store and the accompanying restrictions, because developers largely k…

The other side is that Apple is not preferred in many corporate shops exactly because of that.

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#33

Post by twistedpair »

nivla wrote: post #21
chasing wrote: post #15

"Long story short, it hurt their IE brand. MS no longer has to worry about reputation management for the XP brand, but they sure do for IE." Maybe I'm being a little off-topic, here, but I don't think it can be overstated how much Internet Explorer has destroyed Microsoft's brand. Apart from it being their largest consumer-facing brand apart from Windows (I think), I suspect that more people came into programming thr…

I wouldn't go as far back as 1995. I remember using Netscape those days and IE was considered the "hip & modern browser" just like we do now for Chrome. It was the best viewed in IE days and since there were no real standards or committee back then, everyone wrote their own feature set including MS. It did sure give us the annoying and tags but remember it also gave us Ajax. The shit only really blew when Firefox cam…

Oh, but let's not forget page transition animations introduced by IE. Thank God those died a rapid death.

The other thing that killed NetScape Communicator is that it had been costing $70 per copy. Remember... people used to pay for browsers.

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#34

Post by tmzt »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #30
aninteger wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big customers like Target that would prefer to run their POS machines on Windows XP. So sad..

It's not sad at all when XP does the job and it would cost ridiculous amounts of money to update for no benefit. Now, waiting until the product fell out of support was a mistake, but Microsoft failed to produce a compelling upgrade for XP, period. Even Windows 7, which people generally like, doesn't run on the same hardware as well as XP if that hardware is older, which XP computers are going to be. And Windows 8? As…

Part of "doing the job" is keeping customer data secure, and the company's reputation -- and the CEO's job -- intact.

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#35

Post by twistedpair »

mikeash wrote: post #31
benjaminpv wrote: post #14

>I wonder why these protections aren’t enabled by default. Because bugs exposed by a change in Windows are used to denigrate Windows, not the developer of the buggy app[1]. [1]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/12/23/45481...

Unfortunately, this sort of thing seems to snowball. MS bends over backwards to preserve backwards compatibility, so third-party vendors basically have free reign to abuse the OS, requiring MS to bend over backwards even more to accommodate them, and on and on. Apple, for example, had much less of a problem with this even before the days of the App Store and the accompanying restrictions, because developers largely k…

There are many stories to MS doing this. There are actually tons of conditionals in the MS source and kernel explicitly to fix broken vendor code. Look up the SimCity fixes they put in the Win Malloc to fix bugs Maxis wouldn't so that upgrades wouldn't break the game, despite the bug being entirely Maxis' fault.

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#37

Post by MichaelApproved »

twistedpair wrote: post #33
nivla wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't go as far back as 1995. I remember using Netscape those days and IE was considered the "hip & modern browser" just like we do now for Chrome. It was the best viewed in IE days and since there were no real standards or committee back then, everyone wrote their own feature set including MS. It did sure give us the annoying and tags but remember it also gave us Ajax. The shit only really blew when Firefox cam…

Oh, but let's not forget page transition animations introduced by IE. Thank God those died a rapid death. The other thing that killed NetScape Communicator is that it had been costing $70 per copy. Remember... people used to pay for browsers.

> that killed NetScape Communicator is that it had been costing $70 per copy.

It didn't kill Netscape to charge per copy, that's how software works. People need to earn money for their work creating software.

What killed Netscape was Microsoft taking advantage of its monopoly by pushing itself into a new market with free software. Microsoft didn't need to earn money directly from the browser, so they could afford to give it away for free and take a loss.

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#39

Post by dublinben »

kyberias wrote: post #22

There's this particular style of writing blog articles that assumes that the reader knows all about the context of the topic (here: Microsoft has patched something, have they?) and the relevance to something (what, really?). It's a 5 minute brain dump for the author himself.

That's pretty much a pure example of what a blog entry originally was. Since the author is directly responding to an earlier story, he can assume that the reader is familiar with the context. Especially within the HN community, this is a reasonably accurate assumption. This isn't an article for Time magazine or CNN.

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#40

Post by nivla »

twistedpair wrote: post #33
nivla wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't go as far back as 1995. I remember using Netscape those days and IE was considered the "hip & modern browser" just like we do now for Chrome. It was the best viewed in IE days and since there were no real standards or committee back then, everyone wrote their own feature set including MS. It did sure give us the annoying and tags but remember it also gave us Ajax. The shit only really blew when Firefox cam…

Oh, but let's not forget page transition animations introduced by IE. Thank God those died a rapid death. The other thing that killed NetScape Communicator is that it had been costing $70 per copy. Remember... people used to pay for browsers.

>The other thing that killed NetScape Communicator is that it had been costing $70 per copy. Remember... people used to pay for browsers.

Yes but mine came free with the ISP's installation floppy diskettes, which was very cool of them. If I remember correctly, wasn't Opera initially a paid browser too?

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