echosauce1 wrote:Chris, I get what your saying but I don't think the upgrade from mac os 9 to 10 is an entirely fair comparison. It was not a normal upgrade but an entire redesign. In all fairness, programs written for 9 could still run in 10, (by launching 9 within 10) they just sucked doing it. It was different than upgrading from 8 to 9 or say 10.2 to 10.3.
That said, I'm not well versed in windows so maybe 2000 to xp to vista is as big as a jump technically as 9 to 10 was on mac. If so, I'll stand corrected. It doesn't really matter to me. The end result of the tools we use is how effective we use them.
Though 2000 was pretty much the kernel used for XP it was still a complete redesign of the front end. It also introduced an entirely new filesystem that was no usable for 2000.
The technology took a HUGE jump...as it did from 3.1-95 and 95-98 and 98-2000. XP was closely related to what they did with 2000, but still a whole new world...BUT...the software compatibility problem was next to nill. Just about everything that you would run on 2000 would run on XP and for the most part the drivers for 2000 would work for even a fresh install of XP...not just an upgrade...M$ was looking out for everyone when it came to that. The incompatibilities started when companies upgraded their software on their own within the world of XP and no longer supported the version that were originally made for 2000.
Now with Vista there is a SIGNIFICANT change in the structure of the software and it was built from the ground up as a new OS. M$ did a hell of a job making things backwards compatible, but in order to keep ahead of the curve they had to let a lot of things go...mostly because they were STILL sitting on 2000 technology...mostly because the third party companies were along for the ride and not living up to what was expected of them.
Vista also has a new filesystem that ended up on the back burner, but will be release eventually...mostly because of some odd tech issues they got WAY behind.
So yes...Vista is a whole new beast...I have only lost ONE piece of software to it and it was for a scanner that I bought when I was running win98 10 years ago...so I can't complaint. Everything else works perfectly fine...and I run hundreds of pieces of software on this one machine.
Now to the issue of how M$ writes things...there were over 6000 coders on XP and the majority of them plus more moved right into the creation of Vista...I am very impressed with how they managed to get Vista released and have been for the most part on schedule with slight delays. What most people seem to miss is that M$ is writing software for 96% of the market. The variables are astronomical...Apple writes for about 3% of the market...lost of variables, but significantly LESS to worry about. M$ has tens of thousands of people on staff either direct or third party just to handle 'feedback' and troubleshooting...the infrastructure of their 'response' team is larger than the MAC development teams...so I can say that as much as I do genuinely hate M$ and some of their crap they pull...I applaud them for what they have accomplished...
Chris
That is crap that they are doing that...since you can get the Vista upgrade DVD for $99 anywhere...