I am all for the adoption of new and cutting edge technologies. After all, what self respecting geek doesn't drool at the mouth when something new and shiny comes out? However, I believe that the legacy support in Windows is one of its biggest strengths and a major advantage over other operating systems. Legacy support is a must have if you want your operating system to be adopted by businesses. In a perfect world, every business would instantly switch to new operating systems as soon as they are released. However, in the real world, businesses are very slow to adopt new technologies. Many businesses use software applications which were designed several years ago but still adequately suits their purposes. A lot of times, the original code for these applications is no longer available. Sometimes, these applications are tied into specific hardware or other software requirements. As a result, it takes time for businesses to verify that newer operating systems and technologies will be compatible with their existing software and hardware. Issues like software/hardware incompatibilities and security are a major concern when considering an operating system upgrade. If Microsoft were to suddenly break all backwards compatibility support in Windows, businesses which rely on older technologies (and there are a LOT of them) would not be able to upgrade to the newer OS. This would result in a major loss of profit for Microsoft.

However, I am interested in the idea of possibly having two operating systems. For the business customers, perhaps Microsoft could create an OS which focuses on backwards compatibility and business related features. For the desktop consumer market, Microsoft could create a "shiny new" more consumer friendly version of Windows which emphasizes new technologies and cool end user features. On paper this idea sounds magnificant! However, in practice, it would probably require a lot of hard changes. Microsoft would have to reorganize part of their corporate structure to support the concurrent construction and maintenance of the two operating systems. They would also have to solve a number of hard issues. For example, what is the best way to handle application development across the two platforms? What would happen if a developer wrote an application for the consumer OS but wanted it to also be compatible with the business OS? A modular Operating System design would certainly aid in ensuring the business OS would have the correct technology requirements. However, many complications could still arise. Having two Operating Systems with different technologies and focuses could be a very big headache for any company.

I look forward to seeing what business models Microsoft chooses to use for Windows in the future. (Hopefully NOT subscription based software) I also certainly look forward to seeing what shiny new technologies they will be releasing.