Backward Compatability

It’s wonderful idea, right? The concept that new innovations should still support past methods. We’ve seen it touted in video game consoles and computer systems for years, always to the praise of consumers. If I had to guess, at sometime in your life have heard or said something along the lines of this:

“I’m so glad [SOME NEW TECHNOLOGY] supports [FAVORITE OLD TECHNOLOGY].”

You may have been talking about Game Boy Color supporting original Game Boy games. Maybe it was BluRay players accepting standard DVDs. Either way, it always seemed like a good idea. Until someone challenged it.

Apple, or perhaps more famously Steve Jobs, made and continue to make headlines by turning their back on backward compatibility. The first episode that comes to mind was the apocalypses that ensued when Apple made the jump to Intel-based systems. The Power PC world was enraged, software developers cried foul, but the fact of the matter was Power PC had reached its outer bounds. In order for forward progress to be made, backward compatibility had to be thrown to the side.

A more recent example is the move by many popular iOS developers (Tapbots and Marco Arment, to name a few) to begin requiring the latest version of the iPhone operating system to use their apps. Every update is met with its share of users that can’t or won’t upgrade, and yet these developers continue to look forward, not backward.

The answer is a simple one. It isn’t because these developers are neophiles, deaf to the cries of users. Sometimes moving forward requires turning your back on the past, no matter the cost.