Tired of software companies making their software their last version incompatible with apple os upgrades

[thejadedmonkey]

And? Different engineering, marketing, and procedural goals. It's not some some huge revelation that Microsoft emphasizes backward compatibility and maintaining a broad software catalog. There are pros and cons to this approach, both to the end user and to the platform as a whole, just like Apple's approach to advance the platform at the expense of supporting a "long tail" of software compatibility has its own benefits and problems. This choice has always existed.

Not one of Apple's platform shifts—0x0 to PPC, PPC to Intel, Intel to Apple Silicon, could have gone as smoothly as they did, or have, if Apple made the sanctity of its software catalog paramount. There are certain efficiencies that come from making a clean break, but also certain very real costs to the end user. If Apple's approach feels like an unmanageable burden, it may be a sign the platform you're on does not match your priorities. We are not beholden to any one brand.

We aren't talking about hardware shifts where they emulate API calls, we're talking about the same API's behaving different between macOS versions. It's like one of the most basic tenants of software development, you don't break existing and in-use public APIs. Every company I've worked at, follows this, and Apple is the only company I know of, that routinely disregards this practice.

 

[cateye]

I mean no disrespect toward your direct experience with this, but, from Microsoft's terms of use for their public APIs. Section 6:

WE MAY CHANGE OR DISCONTINUE THE AVAILABILITY OF SOME OR ALL OF THE MICROSOFT APIs AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE. Such changes may include, without limitation, removing or limiting access to specific API(s), requiring fees or setting and enforcing limits on your use of additions to the Microsoft APIs. We may also impose limits on certain features and services or restrict your access to some or all of the Microsoft APIs. We may release subsequent versions of the Microsoft APIs and require that you use those subsequent versions, at your sole cost and expense.

With some quick Googling, I found essentially identical statements in the public API terms of use for Adobe, Google, and, yes, Apple. I think the claim that public APIs are sacrosanct is not realistic.

We could argue that Apple is more aggressive in flexing its rights under these terms, but I think "my old software doesn't work anymore" is not a reasonable or realistic benefit to Apple (or anyone) not doing that.

 

[Nermal]

I realise it's been a couple of weeks but I only just saw this. The terms of use quoted above do not apply to Windows (see section 1d) but rather various online services. The Windows APIs are kept as stable as possible.