this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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I wouldn't say Apple disregards backwards compatibility, but they certainly don't prioritize it to the degree Microsoft does, or that the general open-source community does. For Microsoft, backwards compatibility is their bread and butter. Enterprise customers have all sorts of unsupported legacy shit, and it dictates purchasing decisions and upgrade schedules.
Apple gave devs and users a ton of lead time before dropping 32-bit support. The last 32-bit Mac hardware was in 2006 (the first gen of Intel Macs); it wasn't until Catalina's release in 2019 that 32-bit apps stopped running, and Apple continued releasing security updates for older OSes that could run 32-bit apps for a couple years after that. So that was basically 15 years of notice for devs to release 64-bit apps.
That was much more time than they gave Classic Mac apps under OS X, or PowerPC apps on Intel. I was much more annoyed when PowerPC support was axed. Only a matter of time until Intel apps stop running on Apple Silicon, too. That's gonna be the end of the world for Steam games. Ironically, it's already easier to run legacy Windows and Linux games on Mac than it is to run legacy Mac games.