> On Nov 21, 2019, at 2:43 PM, Pascal Bourguignon via Cocoa-dev > <cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com> wrote: > > Why couldn’t we have application developed once for a few users, and working > consistently over long periods, on a stable platform?
Stable platforms don't make money. (Except maybe in the enterprise market where vendors sell support contracts for e.g. CentOS.) > Currently the only solution would be to package such application in frozen > hardware and system software, which is not practical (users would need > different computers for each application!), and feasible (computers are not > really buillt to last more than a few year of usage). Macs last quite a while. I have friends who still use ten-year-old MacBook Pros. > Actually, things have changed. On Macintosh, basically an application > developed in 1984 against the Inside Macintosh (1.0) specifications still > worked in 1999 in the blue box with MacOS 9.1. Wellll … _some_ applications still worked. Most would crash, or even bomb the OS, or misbehave; because they weren't 32-bit clean, or wrote directly to screen memory, or made assumptions about internal data structures, or etc. etc. etc. Even those that worked would show a black-and-white UI, often in a non-resizable 512x350 pixel window. This level of backward compatibility was one of the things that crippled and almost killed Apple in the '90s. (I know, I was there.) It was nearly impossible to move the OS forward because any sort of modernization — like memory protection or multithreading — would break tons of apps. That's why "Rhapsody" failed. —Jens _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
