From: Yoz Grahame Date: 11:46 on 09 Oct 2003 Subject: The flight of the upgrade path On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 10:57:48AM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote: > How else would they be able to convince you to part with more money? > > I hates software whenever it doesn't do what it should do, and its > vendor expects me to pay them to fix their own mistakes and shortcomings. This leads directly to one of the things that, speaking as a long-time Windows user, mystifies me most about OS X and its users: they make you buy a new OS every year! Now, admittedly there's a new Windows every two years or so (though it looks like the follow up to XP, which came out in '01, won't appear till '05 or so) but you don't *need* it. If you're running Win98 on, say, a P2-400 with 128MB of RAM, you can reasonably expect 95% of Win32 software to work on it, and the only stuff that doesn't will usually require an NT kernel, so it'll work on NT 4 instead. *Everything* runs on the four-year-old Win2K and that will continue to be the case until (and probably well beyond) Longhorn's appearance. Yet within three months of Jaguar coming out, every second bit of new OS X software I saw *demanded* it. I probably have a distinctly inaccurate impression of things here, but... (trails off waving hands, hoping for a Mac user to continue at this point) -- Yoz
From: Yoz Grahame Date: 12:12 on 09 Oct 2003 Subject: Re: The flight of the upgrade path On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 11:46:09AM +0100, Yoz Grahame wrote: > If you're running Win98 on, say, a P2-400 with 128MB of RAM, you can > reasonably expect 95% of Win32 software to work on it, and the only > stuff that doesn't will usually require an NT kernel, so it'll work on > NT 4 instead. I am obviously not including the latest games or high-end dev/server software in that, though even then the barrier to operation is the hardware rather than the OS. It's only this year that the major MS suites are leaving those two OSes behind - Office XP will happily install on Win98 but Office 2003 won't, and VS.net 2002 will go onto NT4 but VS.net 2003 won't. -- Yoz
From: Jonathan Stowe Date: 10:00 on 13 Oct 2003 Subject: Re: The flight of the upgrade path On Thu, 2003-10-09 at 12:12, Yoz Grahame wrote: > VS.net 2002 will go onto NT4 > but VS.net 2003 won't. > Er, for some values of "go onto" - the stinking heap of crap installer kept telling me that it needed a reboot to continue until I gave it up as a bad idea and went home - only to discover this morning that what it really was trying to tell me was "Your computer needs to be shutdown, disconnected from the network, put in a bag and taken on several trains before installation can continue". But of course this was windows 2000. Seethe.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 14:17 on 09 Oct 2003 Subject: Re: The flight of the upgrade path > Yet within three months of Jaguar coming out, every second > bit of new OS X software I saw *demanded* it. I probably have a > distinctly inaccurate impression of things here, but... (trails off > waving hands, hoping for a Mac user to continue at this point) Microsoft doesn't need to use the OS that way, they have Office. Which is even more insidious. If you don't upgrade, you can't reliably read and edit new files. If you do, you're spreading the virus because now all your coworkers and correspondants start having to upgrade unless you're careful to always save in RTF (and now they seem to be embedding COM objects in RTF to block that avenue of escape). But... yeh, I wish Apple would implement service packs to at least upgrade the frameworks (shared libraries on amphetamines) so they were API-compatible. On the other hand I'm glad they've avoided the temptation to do what Microsoft has been doing to keep compatible and having software vendors ship upgraded DLLs with their products.
From: Yoz Grahame Date: 14:43 on 09 Oct 2003 Subject: Re: The flight of the upgrade path On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 08:17:07AM -0500, Peter da Silva wrote: > > Yet within three months of Jaguar coming out, every second > > bit of new OS X software I saw *demanded* it. I probably have a > > distinctly inaccurate impression of things here, but... (trails off > > waving hands, hoping for a Mac user to continue at this point) > > Microsoft doesn't need to use the OS that way, they have Office. Even so, Office 2003 supports a four-year-old OS version (though not, tellingly, WinME), and I'm imagining that Office XP (which supports Win98) is still going to be available and supported for a little while. But I take your point, since if any app can push Windows upgrades it's going to be Office. I was going to say that a four-year upgrade margin is an understandable limit: if you haven't upgraded your OS in five or more years, the chances are that you're not going to be a potential customer for the latest Office anyway. That was until I remembered the hordes of massive enterprise desktop flotillas that are still running NT4. > But... yeh, I wish Apple would implement service packs to at least > upgrade the frameworks (shared libraries on amphetamines) so they > were API-compatible. On the other hand I'm glad they've avoided the > temptation to do what Microsoft has been doing to keep compatible > and having software vendors ship upgraded DLLs with their products. Is that really so bad, though? Especially since recent Windows versions have DLL version management. (Apologies, this thread is already distressingly hate-free. I should do the rant I've been saving up about Windows Networking. I've got some serious bile there.) -- Yoz
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 14:58 on 09 Oct 2003 Subject: Re: The flight of the upgrade path > But I take your point, since if any app can push Windows upgrades it's > going to be Office. The point isn't that Office pushes Windows upgrades, it's that Office pushes Office upgrades. > > and having software vendors ship upgraded DLLs with their products. > Is that really so bad, though? Especially since recent Windows versions > have DLL version management. Yes, it's really that bad. "DLL Version Management" is a horrible kludge that causes more problems than it solves. "Honest. I'm sorry, you wanted to install *that*? So sorry, I haven't been told about it so it must not be the one you really want." Except it doesn't say it out loud, so you don't know why the hell some important app has suddenly stopped working. And then there's "No, you can't install that patch, I have a better version here, what? A virus? Impossible, I wouldn't let that happen! Lalalalala! I can't hear you! Hey, you're putting that back again! Go away, you smelly person, you don't know what you're doing, THIS is the one you want. What? A virus? Impossible. Let overwrite, let override." The solution to complex version problems is not more complex complex version problems.
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