Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? Windows made tons of progress while maintaining this principle and became the most popular operating system in the world. Are you trying to tell me that you believe the evolution of Windows from 1.0 all the way to 7 - the entire time trying to operate according to this principle - doesn't constitute meaningful progress? The recent stagnation of the OS has nothing to do with attempting to maintain backwards comp…
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…
That's easy to imagine: people would have zero reason to use Windows.