Mike Kerner wrote: > First and foremost, you might expect M$ to be able to deliver an OS > that is backward compatible, since they are the 800 lb. gorilla in > this conversation. They put out the specs that all the hardware > vendors built to, before they decided to change the rules and go in > a direction that broke everything. When all the hardware vendors > were screaming, was M$ trying to build a compatibility layer? No?
Of course I don't know the details behind lost backward compatibility as it may relate to a specific unnamed hardware device, but I do know that Microsoft has earned a reputation for maintaining backward compatibility far better than most. Indeed, saddling themselves with that responsibility has been a frequent complaint against the company, said to restrict their options for innovation.
And with XP specifically, IIRC Microsoft gave everyone at least 7 years' advance notice of XP's EOL, having announced in 2007 that it would reach EOL in 2014. Key vendors may have had that disclosure even earlier than the public notice.
Is it possible that the APIs these vendors depended on were later found to present security vulnerabilities?
It is truly impossible for these devices to deliver their functionality using modern supported APIs?
Might it be (again, we can't know for sure until we talk with each vendor) that they simply soldered too little RAM onto the motherboard and provided no means of updating the OS because they weren't thinking long-term?
Lots of questions, likely unanswerable until we learn the specific constraints in play with each device.
If hardware vendors are looking for control over their platforms, perhaps they should be looking at open source OSes so they have access to the source code, ensuring that it will do always be able to do what they need.
-- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web ____________________________________________________________________ ambassa...@fourthworld.com http://www.FourthWorld.com _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
