Re: Microsoft admits that Windows is short-term support in realistic terms

On Mon, 17 Feb 2025 19:34:14 +0300, Anton Shepelev wrote:

Hackers have demonstrated that many games and some browsers do not work
on Windows XP simply because of an explicit version test in the code,
removing which lets the program run.

When we started developing an Android app, Android 4.0 was the latest
version. As time went on 4.0 lost market share and the app did a version
test for a minimum version to support the newer features.

My personal tablet didn't receive updates past 4.1 and would not run the
production app. However I could build my own apk with the version test
removed and it would run -- mostly. 'Mostly' isn't good enough.

I hit the same sort of problem with Esri applications. It used some of the
extended instructions that were not supported by earlier AMD Athlon
processors and would ultimately crash on those machines. Esri did not test
for the instructions so I created a small utility to do the test so our
support people wouldn't install on those machines and then have to deal
with support calls about crashing apps. Trust me, when you install third
party software on a client's system it's your fault if it doesn't work.

Sure, hackers can figure out what does or doesn't work. Commercial
software creators don't want to deal with 'maybe it will work most of the
time'.