Posted by:
ificouldhietokolob
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Date: June 29, 2016 11:14AM
Just a quick comment (not excuses)...
The PC platform has such a wide, varied, and often "not adhering to any standard" of hardware and software that making ANY operating system is, well, problematic at best. It's just not possible to do any kind of new OS, no matter how good it is, and support all of the hardware and software out there. Hardware manufacturers often "take advantage of" bugs and quirks of particular version of an OS like Windows, even though they really shouldn't. Software makers ignore OS calls and write their own code that talks to hardware through "unofficial channels" that are buggy, or that have to disappear in later versions. Frankly, I'm often amazed at how well most of it *does* work.
At one company I used to work for that released dozens of PC titles a year, we had over 200 people in our QA department that did nothing but "compatibility testing." They'd load hundreds of brands of PCs with thousands of variations of hardware (sound cards, graphics cards, hard drives, printers, etc.) and software (OS versions, extensions, add-ons, etc.), and test all of our software on it. It never worked on everything (not surprising, since that's probably not even possible), so we'd make decisions based on what % of people probably had this particular weird combination.
One reason Apple's OS updates work "better" (though honestly that's debatable) is that they have a much tighter grip on hardware and software that runs on the platform. That approach gains you some compatibility while losing users tons of options in hardware and software (and raising costs). Oh, well. Pick yer poison.
Anyway, not making excuses for Microsft or anyone else...just something to keep in mind next time you go buy a new PC, or a new printer, and turn it on and it just works. That's not as simple a task as some folks seem to think :)