Re: How many times must Apple make such DRASTIC architecture changes?

[ZnU <znu@fake.invalid>]

In article <96adnRVX4M938DXfRVn-rQ@comcast.com>,
 "Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:

> Roy Smith wrote:
> > "Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
> > 
> >>Perhaps an interesting thing to count would be the number of
> >>times a Mac owner had to buy a copy of Word or Photoshop...
> > 
> > 
> > I've been forced to buy a new copy of Word twice.
> > 
> > The first time was when 4.0D no longer ran on the OS that came with a new 
> > machine (this might have been when I got my 7200 with MacOS 7.something).  
> > The next time was when I was forced to upgrade to Word v.x, not because 
> > what I had before wouldn't run any more, but because everybody I was 
> > exchanging documents with had upgraded and I was sick of not being able to 
> > open docs people sent me.
> 
> Yes, "data format" creep is a significant problem with any
> application that defines its own data format.
> 
> The last time I upgraded Word (to 97) was for this very reason.
> 
> Applications for editing standard files, like .jpg's or
> .avi's tend not to suffer from this problem as much.

Well, of course AVI keeps shifting around because it's just a wrapper 
format, and newer codecs keep getting released. But for the most part, 
this represents actual progress, unlike Microsoft's file format games.

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   -- George W. Bush in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 22, 2005