What Would Bill Gates Do?
This morning I was talking to a customer about an obscure set of protocols and routines known as an Application Program Interface (API).
We use API’s so third party software like Symantec works more efficiently with an operating system like MS Windows. Symantec’s NetBackup product consists of many underlying services. The API’s give us a set of calling conventions to define how a service works with the operating system.
Important stuff, but not something we talk about every day.
This led to discussion about the wonders of MS Vista. The customer said that they had found 35 incompatibilities between their existing software and Vista. That’s probably an unfair number to lay at the door of Microsoft. Vista has been available to developers for a long time. My guess is that many of those 35 incompatibilities were either old products no longer supported by the vendor or there was some other technical issue looming in the background.
I have a home network that supports both XP and Vista PC’s. I had to upgrade the firmware in the wireless router to get it to play nice (most of the time) with both operating systems. I could probably find 35 incompatibilities between the software on my youngest son’s computer and Vista. I doubt that Deer Hunter 2001 edition will be upgraded to Vista anytime soon.
I wonder what Bill Gates does about the incompatibilities (I am really getting tired of typing this word, how do you turn on the auto complete function in Office?) at his home? Do you suppose he is even aware that Joe IT Lunch Bucket wrestles with incomp…(I am not spelling this word any more)? I vote no. Mr. Gates is too busy saving the world…a noble calling. Meanwhile we in the IT community are too busy upgrading our third party software and hardware to play nice with Vista.
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