Vista apologists seem to feel that programs should be designed to support
the OS, instead of the other way around.
Wonderful! I can see that you don't know much about computing. Ever since
the concept of an operating system was invented, programs have been written
to run on a particular operating system, NOT the other way round.
The OS looks after all the hard work of interfacing with the hardware, and
hides it behind a common library of routines. This means that a program
(let's say, like Word) will run on Dell hardware, IBM hardware, or anything
else that runs Windows. And that hardware might have two, one or no hard
disks, any amount of RAM, vastly different graphics hardware, etc. It
doesn't matter, because the operating system hides all that complication
from the application.
Note that essential phrase: "a common library of routines". Instead of
writing a word processor to target all the different hardware out there,
which would be almost impossible and vastly wasteful of effort, the program
targets a particular operating system instead.
Yes, that's right: the OS necessarily sets the Application Programming
Interface, and applications must be written to comply with that. This is
the rule across the whole computing industry and every type of operating
system.
So no, it is NOT the job of Vista to be compatible with every half-baked
piece of crap software out there. It is the job of the application
programmers to write programs which fully comply with the OS they claim to
target.
XP let programmers get away with breaking various rules. One side effect of
that is that XP is inherently insecure. Vista is much stricter, which is
good for security but prevents some badly written software from running.
One last thing: the rules Vista implements are the same as those for XP. In
other words, if a program was PROPERLY written for XP it will run perfectly
under Vista. If it doesn't run under Vista then IT IS BADLY WRITTEN.
SteveT
