this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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I’m no Windows expert but I wonder why they don’t offer a “Windows Now” type product that breaks backwards compatibility but is more secure. Something that doesn’t even come with cmd.exe because Powershell exists. (Not that it would solve the issue in the article. This is more an aside.) Windows RT was probably not that. From what I understand, it was a “Windows But Weirdly Limited” product. I mean full Windows that can run reasonably modern software but does away with all the backwards compatibility stuff only certain businesses need.
Apple is ruthless about that and it doesn’t seem to hurt them. Linux distros barely bother because you can always find a way to run an old version if you really want to. It’s kind of neat that Windows can still run Excel 1.0 or whatever but as a non-Windows user, it seems like they could break with the past and fix a lot of security issues for a fraction of what they’re spending on A.I. PowerPoints or whatever.
That was what 10X was supposed to be. It was supposed to be practically a full rewrite of the OS to shake off all the legacy cruft with support for existing Win32 apps through containerization. It was dropped along with the Surface Neo and they shifted their focus to Win 11 instead which is a real shame.
Windows's entire selling point is backwards-compatibility, maybe except the ARM version.
Yes, one of the factors that contributed to the demise of Windows Mobile was the lack of backwards-compatibility for apps between 7, 8, an 10.