It's always bothered me that Apple has so little backwards compatibility. I suppose that's why Windows is used by most of the corporate world for "reliability" (more reliable than Apple), and "ease of use" (people don't want to learn command line for Linux). It's just the mid option
The incentives are very different (or used to be).
Microsoft was selling software and needed that software to work. Making it work in as much hardware as possible was a good thing.
Apple was selling hardware and needed customers to upgrade that hardware over time.
Microsoft sells hardware now too, and cares more about the cloud. So, they are not so much about deep compatibility anymore.
> It's always bothered me that Apple has so little backwards compatibility.
So little? macOS Sequoia is compatible with Macs that are over seven years old [1], macOS Sonoma goes back to 2017 [2].
At that point, it doesn't make much sense for anyone to still be operating these things in a production setting because of power efficiency and lack of RAM - and all Intel macOS machines can be used with even the most cutting-edge Linux distributions anyway if you wish to further extend their service life. If you need a modern Windows though, you'll most likely want to go via a hypervisor because of TPM concerns.
The old PPC clankers, it's a miracle the hardware is still running and they haven't died from bad capacitors, Soldergate or whatever in the time.
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/120282
[2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/105113
Is that good? Windows 11 officially supports computers from 2017 too, Linux way further. Ubuntu 24.04 will happily run on machines over a decade old with no problems.
And Apple has poor backwards compatibility. You can't run 32-bit Intel binaries on anything newer than 10.14. PPC has been out of the question for over 15 years. Meanwhile even on Windows on Arm you can run stuff made with XP or even Windows 98 in mind.
> Windows 11 officially supports computers from 2017 too
... assuming they have TPM 2.0, which is far from a given.
> And Apple has poor backwards compatibility. You can't run 32-bit Intel binaries on anything newer than 10.14.
Fair point. Apple is indeed more aggressive on backwards compatibility in software... which is both a blessing and a curse. At the very least, it forces app developers to stay at least somewhat current, which means that Apple has far less legacy garbage to drag around - unlike Windows, where Microsoft went through at least half a dozen completely different programming frameworks and paradigms alone relating to "how to draw a window on the screen" which it has to support to this day simply because otherwise the complaints would be endless. And Linux is even worse in that regard.
> PPC has been out of the question for over 15 years. Meanwhile even on Windows on Arm you can run stuff made with XP or even Windows 98 in mind.
If you really have such old software and a need for it... run it on a VM.
MacOS Sonoma only supports a single model from 2017. The iMac Pro. Everything else is left out. Much easier to find a PC from 2017 that has support for TPM 2.0.
Software devs come and go, there's no guarantee the dev will go back and update old software. Just look at the graveyard of abandoned Mac games on Steam. And even if they do, it often means rebuying or worse a subscription just for the sake of running what you already had.
Can I run something like Crysis in VM with good performance? Especially on a completely different architecture like ARM?
Apple's built their entire company on dropping backwards compatibility. It's how they've maintained their agility for so long, despite being one of the largest companies on the planet.
I am prone to defend them, but they do it in a sensical way (most of the time), I plugged in a G3 whose hard drive was last written to when I was playing hopscotch and when I connected it to wifi it had an official update patch ready for me. They aren't perfect but how many other companies do that. I'd argue that their unflinchingness to move on hardware-wise, and long software support is what gave them success.
Yeah imo they support backwards compatibility where it matters and their hardware is useful for longer as a result. They’re also not afraid to drop it when it’s important to do so.
Alas they didn't become one of the largest companies on the planet because of how they treated their macOS userbase.
Especially nowadays it seems their biggest asset became that they produce good PC-hardware on such a high economics of scale that they're almost unreachable in build-quality...
> Alas they didn't become one of the largest companies on the planet because of how they treated their macOS userbase.
I’m not so sure. We love to complain about Apple, but I don’t see many old timer Mac users now extolling the virtues of Windows. It’s dangerous extrapolating one’s own observations to the world at large, so maybe I’m wrong?
> We love to complain about Apple, but I don’t see many old timer Mac users now extolling the virtues of Windows.
This might be true, but macOS in general is not what made Apple one of the largest companies on the planet.
That's not about complaining, it's about correlation and causation. It's like saying Apple's Wi-Fi routers must be the best because Apple became one of the largest companies on the planet.
I'd say without the iOS ecosystem they would be a well-respected company in the premium tier of their industry, like Dyson or B&O.
I would say that counterintuitively, it’s a factor in the Mac’s strong indieware/botique software scene, which has been going for decades now. Most devs in that camp keep up with the platform changes and those who don’t get swept away, opening up space for someone else to fill that niche.
Can you elaborate further on what software project/products/companies you are referring to?
A couple of long-standing small Mac-focused companies that come to mind are Panic and The Omni Group, which have been building high quality software since the days of classic Mac OS and NeXTSTEP, respectively and are among the fastest to adopt new things coming out of Apple.
They've started to drop the ball, but Apple also was really good at simplifying things to the point that its infamous "just works" slogan was apt.
I switched to mac circa 2003 and reliably connecting to wifi was simple, clean, and intuitive. This was the height of the shitshow that was wireless networking on windows, where half the time windows would fight with the vendor software, etc.
I was even more shocked when I hit the "advanced" button and there was full and working advanced BSD networking settings cleanly laid out, from overriding IP/netmask/router, 802.1X, etc. Windows made it difficult and frustrating to apply these kinds of settings, because they wanted to hide it from the user.
This is not entirely true - they’ve invested quite a bit in maintaining backwards compatibility at least hardware side through various emulation or translation layers : first during the ppc/x86 migration then more recently with the x86 to arm shift.
They're a phone device manufacture, which is how they became the first or second largest company, depending on how the tariffs blow.
Mac and macOS are afterthoughts at this point.
They have somewhere near 10% share of the laptop market and the new Apple Silicon stuff absolutely cooks. For an afterthought, they're an exceptionally well-built and well-loved one that people enjoy using.
This isn’t true. They support old platforms for a long time.
At some point you need to move on. Can’t support ancient platforms forever.
Apple platforms only had command line after NeXT reverse acquision, it isn't as if A/UX was a huge success, so it is kind of ironic see that mentioned.
It was specially clear in the early days of MS-DOS versus Mac OS.
> It's always bothered me that Apple has so little backwards compatibility.
Hear, hear!
Outside the corporate world's devices, I insist that my personal computing choices bring me either high confidence or personally useful knowledge/growth, or I will ban the product/company with malice. I banned APPL for foisting the full load of supporting older devices onto me, and MSFT Windows 11 is facing my personal banishment for kicking all older (but perfectly serviceable) hardware to the curb.
I thank the Linux ecosystem every single day.
I'm writing this on a ten year old Mac with specs in line with what I see on dell.com as still available in new systems, with Apple still delivering some software updates yearly. All the apps I use have been available in both Intel and Apple Silicon flavors. I'm not sure how much more I can expect from Apple / the Apple ecosphere.
You say:
> specs in line with what I see on dell.com as still available in new systems
But I'm not sure if you mean the relative performance of an entry-level chip like the N100 or the raw numbers like "6-8 core, 3.8GHz" - the performance may be fine for your use-cases but doesn't actually compare to decade-newer chips like M2 when pushed.
> Apple still delivering some software updates yearly
They deserve a lot more credit for this transition than the PPC-Intel one, that's for sure...
...what Mac are you using then, again? Because I have a 2017(!!!!) MacBook Pro that's completely unusable due to its terrible performance and fans going at 100% all the time.
Open it and clean the fan. After it, it will work like a new one.
Apple hates when you do this but they can't stop you: I still have one of the original Intel Core Duo Mac Minis from 2006. I upgraded the HDD at one point and also installed Windows. I use it to run a CNC mill.
Doesn't this mainly come down to Macs using weirder architectures while Windows largely stuck to the IBM PC and its clones/descendants?
I'm also seeing more software lately talking about dropping support for Windows 7 or 8 after a certain release.
There's no reason today's macOS couldn't support a Classic environment, like the early releases of OS X. There are a lot of support costs surrounding such an environment, so I don't blame Apple for dropping it.
It supports x86 emulation, for now.
I believe Windows has seen more architectures than Mac OS Classic and OS X combined.
Windows 3rd party software often drops support because Microsoft doesn't support the OS. It could be the desire to use new APIs that aren't included in 7/8 (or soon to be 10), but it's hard to support an operating system as an app vendor that the OS vendor doesn't support.
I always liked VMware's statement that they would support NT4 and above -- like, no you can't.
* I believe Windows has seen more architectures than Mac OS Classic and OS X combined.*
I have never been a Windows user, but I used to keep an eye on it when NT was still the separate business version (pre-Vista) and my NT 4.0 (or was it 3.51?) CD-ROM had x86, MIPS, Alpha and maybe PowerPC support. When things weren’t as clear platform-wise, NT was really a multi-platform system. Since then also x86_64, IA64, ARM64.
CE adds SH3 to the processor list.
And ARM32.
Classic ran as suid root and was a big huge security hole on a multiuser OS. (which is probably why they got rid of it as soon as they could.) There are some more contained emulators of course.
> people don't want to learn command line for Linux
The same applies to Windows and Apple's OS.
The point about the command line is that it is there for people who want it. You can use all of them without using the command line.