Praise for Microsoft

Microsoft has finally put the last nail in XP's coffin. They had been pushing users to upgrade for a while, by offering some pretty serious discounts; but now it is official, Microsoft will stop supporting XP.

Windows XP came out in 2001, that means that it is almost 13 years ago. I don't point that age out to be a sign of weakness, I point it out as a testament to XP potentially being the greatest operating system of all time(relatively speaking); operating systems that work extremely well stick around for a while, those that do not are quickly slain... I'm looking at you Vista and ME.

With that said, I fully support Microsoft announcing that it is ending support on XP.

I hear the criticism's now, "My XP machine works perfectly fine for my needs, so they should support it." My response to this is an analogy... an old 1969(same relative age as XP) Camaro would work perfectly fine today if it was maintained, but GM feels no need to keep turning out replacement parts, and we as consumers are completely fine with that. There are definitely still old Camaros on the road, but those owners must go to aftermarket dealers for custom parts.

Additionally, Operating Systems are some of the most technically difficult systems in Computer Engineering, so I have no doubt that the engineers that were left supporting XP were extremely bright. Keeping them on support of XP is taking away valuable resources from creating something that truly pushes today's boundaries.

Microsoft has definitely had their fair share of flops in recent years(Zune, Surface, Windows 8 to a degree), but I truly believe that this is not one of those. As Henry Ford famously said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."