I’m fan of how Apple does things for their ecosystem. I think only this strategy could have let them make the transition to arm as smooth as it’s been.
That said, I also have deep respect for Microsoft for being so deeply committed to backwards compatibility. You can find developer stories about how they’ve gone out of their way to hard code support for legacy apps (even space pinball) in major Windows updates. That sounds really gross from a code perspective, but from a business/product perspective, it buys trust/loyalty from enterprise customers. We see the opposite issue with Google, who has established a reputation for unreliable long term support. Despite their reputation for strong engineering, their new product lines suffer from distrust. Potential customers ask themselves why pay the onboarding cost for a Google product when it’s unclear if it’ll be around in two to three years.
That said, I also have deep respect for Microsoft for being so deeply committed to backwards compatibility. You can find developer stories about how they’ve gone out of their way to hard code support for legacy apps (even space pinball) in major Windows updates. That sounds really gross from a code perspective, but from a business/product perspective, it buys trust/loyalty from enterprise customers. We see the opposite issue with Google, who has established a reputation for unreliable long term support. Despite their reputation for strong engineering, their new product lines suffer from distrust. Potential customers ask themselves why pay the onboarding cost for a Google product when it’s unclear if it’ll be around in two to three years.