Good point. The underlying problem is that since the early days of Windows, business applications have used undocumented features, depended on undocumented behaviors, constructed workarounds for structural flaws and behavioral bugs, etc. As a result, those applications are heavily dependent on old, often broken, code deep in the bowels of the OS.
Microsoft has a many technically competent software engineers, brilliant system designers, and great system architects. But they are all hobbled by having to maintain "back-compatibility" with stuff that never should have been done that way in the first place.
Windows will never escape the damage done to NT in the mid-90's by trying to make it act like Win95. Everything after that just added insult to injury. It's really a shame; it could have been done so much better. Microsoft can never take a deep breath and re-do it from scratch, the way Apple did with the switch to OS X.
Make your bed, lie in it.
Microsoft can never take a deep breath and re-do it from scratch, the way Apple did with the switch to OS X.”
I was in IT during this. We supported Win and Mac. The OS X transition took about 2 years. They put in code that allowed you to run “classic” apps.
It worked damn well, especially considering OS X was a total departure from Mac OS. I didn’t find any MAC OS apps l could not run including the Server software.
I very much disliked MacOS until OSX. Then I switched to Mac and haven’t looked back.
I like UNIX.
Thank you for a concise delineation of the problem.