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Comment by ramijames | Hacker News Reader

I think that people aren't seeing what Apple is doing through the lens of efficiency, and the wider impact that has on their software and hardware.

Them not having to support 30+ year old software means that they can be more nimble and make better hardware choices.

Look at the mess that Microsoft has made for itself by setting the requirement that software made in the 90s must still run on modern OSs and hardware. It's bonkers and is slowly killing the company.

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As a counter-point, look at WINE on Linux and Crostini's containerized software on ChromeOS, clearly it is possible to support varied software without over-complicating the OS. And that's what Rosetta 2 does as well, if it's held Apple back the last 6 years it hasn't shown at all.

It will be very surprising if we see any benefits from cutting Rosetta 2, especially worth gutting all the games and software this has empowered via Steam/WINE/CrossOver.

At this point cutting Rossetta 2 is probably to force the laggards like Sonos to start supporting Apple Silicon.

I just don't see how that's worth cutting off the ability to run Windows versions of Steam and games and software through Crossover and WINE. So much more software is being affected than just Mac apps that haven't been updated, yet transparently run just fine.

If Valve shut down Proton to force developers to release Linux versions of their games for the Steam Deck it would be unequivocally bad, right?

> Look at the mess that Microsoft has made for itself by setting the requirement that software made in the 90s must still run on modern OSs and hardware. It's bonkers and is slowly killing the company.

Forcing people to create a MS account to log in their Windows computer, that's because of backward compatibility?

Pushing Copilot absolutely everywhere, that's because of backward compatibility?

GitHub being down almost daily, that's because of backward compatibility?

The way Windows implements backwards compatibility is not sustainable in the long term, as it increases both maintenance costs and attack surface, but the current state of Windows and its dwindling appeal has little to do with it and more with poor design decisions, and a competition that has made better design choices. Linux has been a viable desktop for years, and Macs have been the gold standard against which everyone is judged since the 1980s.

Windows still owns the corporate drone desktop, but, oddly enough, that’s now being served as a VDI through a Linux thin client.

I disagree completely. Backwards compatibility has precisely nothing to do with why Windows is terrible nowadays.

And that's also entirely orthogonal to hardware - the hardware battle between ARM Mac and ARM PC is really a battle between Apple and Qualcomm (Apple won).

In hindsight, rather than relying on Snapdragon, Microsoft should have started designing their own high-efficiency ARM SoCs 15 years ago like Apple did. But I mean, everything is clear in hindsight isn't it.

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