[Ardour-Users] OSX vs Linu

[John Emmas]

m-eik, I do think you're being very unfair to Windows with your previous
comments.  No, Windows doesn't run on Amiga, Atari, Sparc etc but they are
not its target platform.  That's why I described Microsoft's problems as
being *almost* on almost the same scale as Linux.

Furthermore, your comments about Windows lack of backwards compatibility are
just ill-informed.  Right up until Vista, backwards compatibility has
been the #1 feature of Windows that made it more attractive than its
competitors (esp. MacOS).  In fact, under XP I am still running programs
that I first bought for Windows 3.1 - and even a very old DOS app!!
Contrast that with Mac, where any major OS upgrade has traditionally
required you to upgrade all your favourite apps, at enormous expense.
Microsoft, to its credit, has only just ditched support for the oldest
16-bit hardware & software after 25 years so it can hardly be criticised for
ignoring backwards compatibility.

But it's this comment that is most irksome:-
>
> my windows experiences were always if update mechanisms were
> implemented at all, each program did it differently, and automation was
> impossible).
>
I can only surmise that your experiences were a very long time ago.  Why is
it that Windows critics insist on lambasting Windows because of how it used
to be 20 years ago??  Like all other OS's, Windows has come a long way since
its early beginnings.  It is grossly unfair to be still criticising it for
problems that were solved decades ago.

If anything, David has highlighted the biggest (and seemingly unsolvable)
chink in Windows' armour - namely its vulnerability to malware.  He's
absolutely right that nobody can get very far with Windows without needing
to install a firewall / popup blocker / antivirus software etc etc. That is
undoubtedly its achilles heel.

John.