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Comment by whynotmaybe | Hacker News Reader

What's the term for when some great technology is constrained by our own human limits?

We all have a 2000's supercomputer equivalent in our pocket but still can't type faster than 60wpm.

The first car to reach 100kmh did it in 1899 but we're still driving at that speed on many highways around the world (+-20%) because us humans can't react quickly enough to drive it safely above that speed.

I was promised a flying DeLorean when I was a kid, I'm starting to think that won't be the case before I'm older than Old Biff Tannen.

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I'm less disappointed by lack of flying cars, I can wait for those.

But that in 30 years of computer history where advancements are literally exponential and all we have to show since NT is Windows 11!?

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Also, Windows insists on being backward compatible.

It is therefore doomed to mediocrity.

I don't qualify as mediocre the fact that I can still play Total Annihilation(1997) on my windows 11 computer.

oh, TA! get +1 from me! Hope you tried Supreme Commander too - TA2 if you ask me (from the same guys, more or less) and made much better especially in micromanagement.

I think it's a celebration that we can still play and run software from 40 years ago. Why shouldn't we push for backwards compatibility? We should demand it, as consumers.

[Article author here]

Because it's holding us back, very very badly.

When I swear at my computers, which I do quite a lot, I want them to know what it means and to pay attention.

I understand but compare this to what else we've got.

Apple seems happy to throw everything out and start over every few years. I would say they've conditioned the Apple fanbase to always want changes, even if they're not to the benefit of end users. I'm not sure how older software fare on macOS but when I used macOS for ~10 yrs... it was always something new that everyone should be using. Or use the software that is packaged with the OS. The push is stronger every year to move to iCloud or some sort of managed platform, which means an ever-increasing amount of lock-in.

On the Linux side of the house, you're bound to run into lib incompatibilities. There's ever an ongoing churn of breaking changes on Linux. So, unless someone has been maintaining packages for your specific distribution, you might be out of luck unless you're technically inclined.

On mobile OSes, you fare even worse. Running older software is a herculean task on that front. Then there's the never ending cycle of in-app purchases and subscriptions you have to tangle with.

Being on Windows, for all of its warts, is a much-needed departure from the above. I can still run games I played back in 1997 as well as most software from that time. With WSL2, you get the added benefit of running a Linux environment alongside your Windows one now.

I have an old iPad Mini (2nd or 3rd gen, can’t remember) that would make a perfect controller for my Sonos speakers. Its hardware is more than capable enough. Except the Sonos app requires a version of iOS that this iPad can’t run. Sometimes backward compatibility is wonderful.

(Typing this on my 1st gen iPhone SE. A wonderful phone, but I’ll probably have to stop using that soon as well, for similar reasons)

[Article author here]

I think you misunderstand me, in multiple ways.

1. I'm typing on a Mac. It's an i7 with Monterey. I have been using Macs since System 6 on a 68000 in 1988.

2. Mac OS X is a UNIX. Not a figure of speech: it is registered and conformant.

https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/apple.htm

As such, Mac OS X contains software baggage that is over a decade older than Classic MacOS, released 1984.

It keeps more than you'd think.

3. Linux keeps more than you'd think, too. I can and do run WordPerfect 8 for Linux on Ubuntu 22.04, alongside MS Word 2003.

I wrote about how to get it:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/20/wordperfect_for_unix_...

4. On my Win11 box, I have Freecell Solitaire extracted from Win32S for Windows 3.1, released 30Y ago.

I don't need this level of continuity. I enjoy it. I still have machines that can boot into DOS and I have DOS apps I still use. But that is also fine in a VM.

But 30 years after NT, 54 years after Unix, I want all that legacy stuff gone.

I want legacy nonsense like "disk drives" and "files" gone.

I want an OS and apps in a type-safe native language, not some BS memory-managed VM. I have multicore 64-bit machines with gigs of RAM and these days I could fit terabytes of nonvolatile memory straight onto their memory bus. I want a transparent object store in persistent memory, like a modern multitasking Apple Newton that can handle live video and surround audio, that understands my voice and my tone and my gaze and can read my intentions and show me the results in VR.

I gave a FOSDEM talk about this. You might enjoy it.

https://archive.fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/new_type_of_c...

I don't think I misunderstood as much as you thought.

The first half of your post is kind of irrelevant.

As to the latter half of your post, just use iOS. I think that fits the bill - dump the rest, see how it works out for you. Stop using legacy software and move on.

If you think it's irrelevant, that means you didn't understand it, either.

Never mind. I am not here to tell anyone off or complain or anything.

But BTW, I dislike iOS and dislike it more with each successive version, and it's even more burdened down with irrelevant legacy junk than any desktop OS.

Backward compatible only has to run the older software. Windows versions have no qualms about moving/duplicating settings about all willy-nilly. The start button/menu and notifications have changed numerous times, just not in the best (to be generous) ways.

I hope Windows remains backward compatible as long as humanly possible. I hope in 2050 I can load games from my childhood and they run just fine on modern Windows. Even if it means it isn’t as streamlined as macOS.

It is also a reason why I keep using it as main OS, despite my years of experience with UNIX like OSes.

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