I’ve often heard that the reason Windows has suffered from bloat and so much has been built on top of ancient underlying technologies, partially to ensure compatibility with old software.
If something like Windows 11 requires specific hardware in order to install it, why does it need to accommodate compatibility for archaic devices/software?
Would it not be preferable for Microsoft to start from scratch with an OS that is considerably more efficient and cut-down for newer devices, similar to something like Apple’s MacOS transition from Intel to Apple Silicon, and just provide security updates for the legacy operating systems that would be in use on un-upgradable hardware?
The goal of msft isn’t to be an efficient steward of your resources, or better enable the user, or to create a platform for game/app developers in hopes of creating a more attractive ecosystem for you.
It’s nothing like any of those things.
The goal of Microsoft is to maximize shareholder returns, and the best way to do that is to abuse their dominant market position while monetizing every aspect of their platform that most people will buy anyway.
Apple is a publicly traded company as well, which means they have the same incentives, but they do the exact opposite, having frequently broken backwards compatibility in major ways in order to make massive structural changes, like moving to an entirely different processor architecture not once, not twice, but three times now, and often breaking backwards compatibility in major ways in order to reduce bloat.
This is more likely a cultural issue than a technical one. Basically, both companies practice very different philosophies when it comes to engineering decisions. Of course, a major reason why Apple can do this while Microsoft can’t is the fact that Apple makes their own hardware, while Microsoft doesn’t.
I’m not sure how this fits in to the question to be honest.
I don’t doubt the greed, but I don’t see how that pertains to legacy code bloat.
The point is that they have no financial incentive to clean up or prevent bloat, so they don’t.
Linux doesn’t either, but the Linux community operates on principles and passion instead of financial incentives, and so thusly is not similarly bloated.
Ah right, yeah the bloat I’m asking about isn’t so much about all the shit applications they bundle in, but the stuff that remains to maintain compatibility with obscure or legacy hardware/applications.
The financial incentive would be long term user retention, combined with a simplified codebase and performance improvements.
The legacy compatibility is very important for microsoft’s enterprise customers, many of whom are still using some legacy software for aging machinery. A lot of big businesses are slow to move away from legacy software because it always incurs cost. Often they will tell microsoft and other companies they buy products from that compatibility is essential. They won’t invest thousands or millions of dollars to upgrade their aging infrastructure simply on microsoft’s insistence with their new product.
Wouldn’t the aging hardware running that legacy software not be upgradable to the latest Windows versions due to modern hardware requirements anyway?
No because it is old software running on new hardware. Modern Windows comes with a ton if code so “old stuff” still works, it even favors bundling runtime cold for OLD frameworks rather than new in the installation. That’s why you need to install modern. NET 10 etc after a new windows installation when installing new softeare, yet it runs old software out of the box. Companies aren’t running dinosaur code on old computers, they’re running dinosaur code on modern computers.
If i remember right, Microsoft said they’re dropping support for a lot of the old .NET stuff at least, so we’ll see if it happens and if companies get mad or update themselves finally
Ah right, I’d assumed old hardware because you’d said “upgrade aging infrastructure”.
This is true and might be an argument that windows 11 is actually is moving away from its archaic foundations, slowly. But hardware isnt always a limitation. Companies will refresh laptops and workstations with better hardware yet still require use of legacy software. Its a tug of war between a companies financial spending, want for the latest tech in other areas of the company, tolerance to security vulnerabilities, etc. If microsoft tells them that they cannot use their essential legacy software on windows 11, and drop support for their older versions because of their own financial review, then they risk losing their largest customers.
I do think the legacy bloat is more to do with its foundations in software, being based on windows NT, moreso than legacy hardware. And with hardware improving, software gets faster for free just by running with more overhead. Its led to an inefficiency boom which you can see with games becoming less optimized because they dont need to be. Same could be applied to window’s with respect to new hardware.
What financial incentive is there in user retention and code improvements? Windows licences likely don’t contribute a large share of MSFTs income (would have to look it up, but am currently sitting in a train with just a smartphone) and even with all the shit since Win11, Windows is still the largest OS by far.
MSFT is earning a lot of money with AI & cloud. Any increase in revenue there likely dwarf possible gains in Windows improvements.
Is that a serious question?
Simplified codebase = fewer internal resources required.
User retention = continued revenue streams from applications and services that run on that platform.
It is, not from a technical pov but from an investment pov. I very well understand the benefit as a person in IT, but what do you think is more important to investors? Spending (significant) resources on behind-the-scenes improvements that may keep some income flowing vs spending resources on the new AI hype tool to be sold to better paying enterprise customers?
I don’t endorse that mode of operation (team 🐧), but that seems to be what’s happening.
That’s not a big financial incentive.
Microsoft will remove stuff when it actually gets in the way.
If it’s easier to leave in and not have to touch dozens of other programs/services then they will.
They might mark it as depreciating, and start planning a suitable replacement. They might just mark it as depreciating and kick the can down the road.
When enough services that relied on that depreciating thing have been touched due to other updates, then they might look at actioning the depreciation.
But if it doesn’t actively break the thing they are currently working on, the cost overhead or ripping it out is insane.
There might be other dev teams working on features that now rely/leverage the thing marked as depreciating. But the thing getting marked as depreciating happened towards the end of the other teams new feature development cycle. At which point actually depreciating the thing might invalidate that other teams entire project.
And maybe the rip it out, and it turns out one of their large clients (or a large amount of the user base) was relying on it.
Addressing technical debt is always hard to justify, but it always makes a better project.
If management doesn’t care about a better project, they will prioritise features and things that make money