On Fri, 12 Jan 2018 15:31:49 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

"Gene Wirchenko" wrote

| Microsoft dropped support for 16-bit applications. I do not call
| that being very good with backward compatibility.
|

And I can't hook up a typewriter to my
computer's PS2 port. Oh, well. But I can
write VB6 software that runs on virtually every
currently running Windows computer, back to
Win95, with no support files needed. If I were
programming on a Mac I'd b targetting only the
last two versions. God help any Mac user who
wants software to run on a 3-4 year old machine.

I was at a Mac meeting on Monday. Someone described doing just
that but with a machine that was about nine years old. It was a
high-end laptop at the time it came out which might have softened the
difficulty, but nine years.

Each bitness requires a shim to run the earlier
version, as I expect you know. Win-64 has to have
built-in functionality to adapt to Win-32. Likewise
with Win-32 to Win-16. In other words, Microsoft
didn't break anything. They just didn't build in support
for Win16. I don't know how much trouble that
would have been. But they have to draw the
line somewhere. Software circa Win3.1 can't
be any more than a novelty these days.

Yes, it can be.

That it might well not be needed by you does not mean that it is
not needed by others.

Microsoft's XP Mode system does not work properly on my Windows 7
Professional system despite multiple tries. And it does not work --
by design -- on my laptop which has Windows 7 Home. This is not
backwards compatibility; it is backward combatability.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko