Microsoft shouldn't get too much credit for maintaining compatibility, since all they had to do was basically support 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) on Intel while Intel did most of the hardware development. OTOH Apple had to migrate from 68K to PPC to Intel to Apple Silicon with varying degrees of control over all of them. Not surprisingly they had their greatest success when they got control over the whole widget. Apple will have some difficult and probably arbitrary decisions to make regarding the M1/M2 chips, but in the past the cleavage was mostly automatic. Seven (or six) years is a good run for the vast majority of users, and they can squeeze a few more years out of that if they prefer.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Windows 10 Deadline Boosts Mac Sales
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
What does that have to do with the fact that Apple is unpopular in business because they don't give a damn about compatibility?
Is it really that hard to pay attention to the content of comments instead of spouting fanboy phrases?
Apart from the fact that the majority of companies do not have an RDP server. Why should they? It is far too expensive for small and many medium-sized companies. When thinking about companies and their it needs, please focus less on Fortune500 and more on the shipping company around your corner.
Interestingly, Windows NT (which from Windows XP onwards was also the basis for the consumer versions of Windows) was multi-platform from the beginning. It wasn't even designed for x86 initially, but for Intel i860, an early attempt of Intel at RISC. There were also versions for DEC Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC (!) and later Intel Itanium CPUs IIRC.
People tend to forget that Windows NT was a completely new system and has not much in common with Windows 9x technically.
macOS gained multi-platform support with the "migration" to OPENSTEP actually (i.e. starting with Mac OS X 10.0), as this system was also multi-platform already, with builds both for NeXT's own 68k platform as well as x86 later on.
I'm pretty sure Apple had x86 builds of Mac OS X internally from the beginning and left that door open so to speak (which was a good move).
Last edited:
Again, this has gotten a lot less important.
The shipping company around my corner rents an Azure Virtual Desktop or similar solutions.
I already did this using Flyby11 on two older macs all works perfectly.
Yep, the mid-90's was a free-for-all. You could go into computer mags and price DEC or MIPS-based NT systems alongside Intel, while looking at high-end products from Sun and Silicon Graphics. Eventually Apple bought NeXT and started working on Rhapsody, which led to OS X (PowerPC first) in 2000. Eventually it took nearly a decade for Apple to release its first x86 products while it worked out compatibility and performance concerns. I always thought it was a poorly-guarded secret that Apple had x86 in the labs since all of the building blocks were already in place.
The developer releases of Rhapsody even came with x86 builds still, in addition to PowerPC. I didn’t use it back then (I started with the Mac OS X Public Beta, after having used NeXTSTEP and OpenStep at a previous employer), but I vaguely remember having managed to install it in VMware once years ago
Have to admit I wasn't brave enough. All I remember from the public betas was that they looked cool, yet I didn't know what I was going to do with them since they had no software. I also ran (and liked) BeOS.The developer releases of Rhapsody even came with x86 builds still, in addition to PowerPC. I didn’t use it back then (I started with the Mac OS X Public Beta, after having used NeXTSTEP and OpenStep at a previous employer), but I vaguely remember having managed to install it in VMware once years ago
Which is why Excel for Mac is crippled and won’t work for any businesses.
Considering MS launched Excel on the Mac eons ago, it’s a form of anti-competitiveness by a dominant player. The DOJ should have looked into the Excel situation years ago when MS first started making professional features Windows only for no good reason.
Of all those things, the one that made the most people mad (non-tech people) was the messing up of their favorite free games like solitaire, freecell, hearts, etc
BeOS was amazingly fast for the day. Just had no software. Was a fun exercise.
Anyone remember Apple’s 3D web browser that let you fly through the layers of a website structure until you found what you were looking for? Came out around the same time as BeOS.
I do think some of the disconnect between love/hate discussions on W11 is that many of the most annoying forced changes are either optional or not there on Pro/Enterprise.
My wife’s machine was 10Pro and I updated to 11Pro. MS didn’t say anywhere during the install it was doing Pro. Not once, and I was worried. But after reboot it was still Pro, and the ads and trying to force her onto the cloud didn’t happen. I wasn’t even positive it had updated to W11 at all it didn’t seem much different.
My wife’s machine was 10Pro and I updated to 11Pro. MS didn’t say anywhere during the install it was doing Pro. Not once, and I was worried. But after reboot it was still Pro, and the ads and trying to force her onto the cloud didn’t happen. I wasn’t even positive it had updated to W11 at all it didn’t seem much different.
That is certainly a factor. Also, Windows is quite customizable.
So I'd say the out-of-box-experience of macOS is nicer but if you hit a wall and encounter problems, troubleshooting might actually be easier on Windows.
And Microsoft tends to be more transparent in regards to bugs, whereas Apple often either tries to blame users (you're holding it wrong) or simply ignores issues altogether, at least publicly. Apple cannot do wrong
It also depends on your use cases. If you're a home user or a student and just need a laptop to browse the web and do some light office work for example, macOS makes more sense. Same for professional users like photographers for example.
But if you need to interface with non-Apple hardware or need special types of software, Windows (or Linux) might often be a better fit.
There's no perfect system for everything. Mac OS X was on the way to that for a while IMHO, but Apple took a different route once iOS became so popular.
It does seem that way, some people at work seems to have a new phone every year, Vodafone in the UK don't help with that.
My Oppo is four years old, need replacing now due to some problems, shame really. My Pc is around 9 years old, well the board, part of the memory and CPU is, video card is older and so is one of the drives and the case is much older.
My Mac is now just over 2 years old, it was either update the PC or get a Mac, decided to get a Mac.
Computer wise, people do seem to be staying with what they have got unless they have to change due to hardware failure, you will still get the hardcore games player updating, but people who use their machines for basic stuff will keep with what they have. A lot of people do basic stuff on phones or tablets these days.
My Pc is just about hanging on, I got it working again without crashing after 10 minutes into a game a few weeks ago, so I will keep it up and running until there is a time when something goes belly up.
My Mac is the one i use for most things these days, but I do need a pc to sort out my Rock 4a+ single board machine.
Yep, the last one certainly for me, used Windows for far too long, and looking at what they are doing with Windows 11, forced accounts and other stuff, I decided in my old age it was time for a change.
i know people say that MS supported Windows 10 for a long time. but I think they did not have a lot of choice, so many people using it, including offices, there would have been more hell to play than there is now.
Well, for starters, until Windows 10, you could choose the 32 bit version of the OS which could run 16 bit software dating back to Windows 9x and DOS…
Windows 11 has ditched a lot of hardware compatibility…
16 bit is indeed not possible anymore directly, as the NTVDM is gone in 64 bit Windows. Although quite a few cases could probably be covered by something like DOSbox, with even better compatibility than NTVDM.
But if you consider that NTVDM has been around since 1993, it has been supported by Microsoft for more than 30 years. That would be comparable to Apple still supporting 68k Mac OS 7 applications in macOS Sequoia.
Nobody wants the version of Windows that tries to shove unwanted AI features into it left, right, and center.
Sure, but there haven't been 32-bit x86 CPUs in a long time.
Windows could've done 16-bit in 32-bit in 64-bit, but I think it's perfectly reasonable on Microsoft's part not to implement that. And if you really still need it, odds are a VM is enough. (At which point you may not even need Windows — even something as simple as DOSBox could be enough.)
The only exception being hardware (say, interacting with machinery that only has 16-bit drivers).
I wouldn't really say so.
You would have thought they’d have done that by now, wouldn’t you?
Maybe their bean-counters figured to wait until the “first to jump ship” bought more expensive MacBooks - like the new M5 - before mopping up the rest of the “hold-outs” with the A19Pro Macbook next year.
Welcome to the world of Mac fanboys (though many are gals)... same folks that once said a smartphone should never have a screen larger than 4 inches... and now say Apple would be insane to have a small screen device (unless the mini is brought back, then we flip again).
It's not just Apple... folks that treat their productivity tool vendor as faith get themselves into some weird mental gymnastics.... sure I love Apple and the tools they provide me, but there's a ton wrong with them and to me they're "very good"... they win because at least with notebooks everyone else pretty much sucks... phones it's a different story... I'd say we're close to parity if not Apple being behind given all the choices available (e.g. foldables)... Apple wins because of eco-system.
Edit: It's "they're" not "there"... I should know better!
Last edited: