I don't trust Apple. I can run Win95 programs on Windows8 still, and that is a good thing. If I'm building programs that last decades, I don't want to build them upon Apple's quickly changing landscape.
I mean, afterall, as much as Win32 is legacy code... Posix / SysV compatibility in Linux is an even bigger one. That doesn't make Linux a bad system, on the contrary, it makes me confident in building long-term solutions on top of those systems.
Microsoft has their new APIs: C# and .NET, which are all good and all for new programs. But their constant support of Win32 API is frankly one of their best assets. APIs with 30+ years of backwards compatibility are _good_ for the programmer.
> If I'm building programs that last decades, I don't want to build them upon Apple's quickly changing landscape.
There's definitely a niche for "write once, run forever" (for a more extreme example, see the IBM 360/70/80/90/z/Architecture; a modern z/arch mainframe can run binaries made for a 360 half a century ago, unmodified), but it generally isn't that exciting to consumers, and even the enterprise market seems to be getting a little more cautious of it for internal stuff.
I mean, afterall, as much as Win32 is legacy code... Posix / SysV compatibility in Linux is an even bigger one. That doesn't make Linux a bad system, on the contrary, it makes me confident in building long-term solutions on top of those systems.
Microsoft has their new APIs: C# and .NET, which are all good and all for new programs. But their constant support of Win32 API is frankly one of their best assets. APIs with 30+ years of backwards compatibility are _good_ for the programmer.