And that's the point I was and I am still discussing, nothing more and nothing less: leaving out a version number does not automatically make an operating system bad. Microsoft had very good reasons to do so, it was a justified step. Also note that this has absolutely nothing to do with if something is trash or not; that's not the point, the point is to make it possible to keep stuff running either way when people and businesses are depending on it, and that's exactly what Microsoft did!
Stuff that A doesn't run anymore anyway making this endeavour wasted and B stuff that does not need to run anymore not for companies nor for anyone else other than a few gamers who want to play super old games once again making this undertaking completely wasted. Their solution was stupid and simply not necessary and their solution just proved that once again (as stupid as it sounds) that every second windows is destined to be trash.
You can say whatever you want but if you run a company that hasn't updated to XP or Win7 by now (both of which would run these old apps fine) or in case you want to update to Windows 10 (for whatever reason you'd want to do that as business especially since Win7 is still getting security updates and as far as i know even extended support for businesses) is still running an app that bad and old, possibly as remnants from the medieval times when they opened their company, its your own fault for not going with the times. You can't expect your 20+ year old apps to work infinitely (unless they are decently coded) unless you are the owner of said applications for your company and can simply fix these isues. Once again Microsoft made a solution for something that A: doesn't need one and B: is completely obsolete for both users and companies by now. It's over 20 years now ladies and gentlemen. I worked in a company that was still using software from 20+ years ago and they used (still) XP to go with it. A very simple and elegant solution to this problem on their part, no aid from Microsoft required.
Again it's obvious that you have got not much personal experience how IT in a corporate environment does work; you obviously don't care about it, you only care about some ideal of how beautiful programming code should be probably so to say which is the extreme on the opposite side, which is ok. Microsoft has to care about it, otherwise they would be off the market fast.
I can only tell you from what i've seen from personal experience in a company with 20+ year old software and i can tell you that although it worked it was a chore (due to the PC's being close to stoneage PC's)... but hey they worked and the software worked too, they don't give a shit what Microsoft does. And from friends who work as IT Engineers, Server Admins and coders for companies i know that (given they know what they are doing) either write their own apps, which once again circumvents the issue or only use solutions that don't have these issues in the first place, once again making Microsofts intervention obsolete.
There is simply no reason for Microsoft to step in after such a long time and go for backwards compatibility. Such idiotic decisions are what lead to 32bit support for so long when it should have been gone with or right after XP already.
Also, Microsoft announced that Windows is not their most important thing anymore. Preeeetty sure they give a flying fuck about Windows and they could give a fuck about backwards compatibility.
By the way on a side note it is interesting that Microsoft Windows is still your preferred choice of viewer development, regardless that it sucks, because you only did and do offer Windows binaries. So this means it must sucks less than MacOS or Linux for you, like for so many. Most of us don't choose an OS because it is sexy, but based on what sucks less for our purposes.
You got that damn right. I use Windows because Windows (at least 7) is the least shit out of the three for me. Mac is overpriced and shit, Linux basically requires you to be a rocket scientist to start an application and Windows is so broken that even a swiss cheese has less holes but for what i do, development and gaming as well as multimedia, Windows is still the number one, it doesn't require me to use hacks, go for emulators (unless i want to play DOS games) or use other kinds of "translators" for foreign implementations of apps because my OS isn't supported. Not because of backwards compatibility but because of compatibility and market share.
If there was anything i would change it would be taking Windows 7, removing the NSA spying and possibly hundreds of backdoors Microsoft so carefully implemented in basically all their OS's, adding DirectX12 (which is already possible after they opened it up to be used on 7 for developers willing to do so, which just proves another one of those things i've said a million times in the past: it's all PR bullshit and all Windows's could use all DX's if they just wanted to), adding all security fixes (minus the bullshitery improvements like Defender), those very little few "improvements" they supposedly made and then call it a day.
On a sidenote: I'm not making this rule of "every second windows is trash", i'm just putting my observations from since 98/ME times into words. As stupid as it may sound, just look at the evidence. 98 (good) ,ME (bad) ,XP (good), Vista (bad), 7 (good), 8 (bad), 9 (good, doesn't exist), 10 (bad). Note that "Server" versions and inbetween versions are not counted, only major consumer OS's, why? Because they are technically the same, Example: Vista (6.0), Server 2008 (6.0), 7 (6.1), Server 2008R2 (6.1), 8 (6.2), Server 2012 (6.2) etc.