better practical compatibility for sure. Of course not literally the entire back catalog of old legacy smartphone apps are still supported but probably like 99.999% of apps people still use are supported on 99.999% of phones people use. 32-bit app devs have had 10 years to update to 64 bit, and most managed it within the first couple. Also the kind of major compatibility jump as with 32bit>64bit should be fairly infrequent, not like every console hardware generation.
compare that to game consoles where the last gen could be cut off from new games at any given time, and next gen is a crapshoot whether the manufacturer will support backwards compatibility.
If devs have to actively maintain software to support new versions, I would argue that is not better than how consoles handle backwards compatibility. Especially since games tend to be tend to be treated as finished products that devs stop updating once they move on to their next project.
better practical compatibility for sure. Of course not literally the entire back catalog of old legacy smartphone apps are still supported but probably like 99.999% of apps people still use are supported on 99.999% of phones people use. 32-bit app devs have had 10 years to update to 64 bit, and most managed it within the first couple. Also the kind of major compatibility jump as with 32bit>64bit should be fairly infrequent, not like every console hardware generation.
compare that to game consoles where the last gen could be cut off from new games at any given time, and next gen is a crapshoot whether the manufacturer will support backwards compatibility.
True, any lost compatibility is usually due to the devs ceasing support and not because of the OS’ limitations.
If devs have to actively maintain software to support new versions, I would argue that is not better than how consoles handle backwards compatibility. Especially since games tend to be tend to be treated as finished products that devs stop updating once they move on to their next project.