It is very hard not to smile when reading that Apple have brought out a new version of their operating system (called Lion for some strange reason) which does not allow access to many Network Attached Storage devices. There are many plausible excuses for this, but at the end of the day Apple have changed the way that their OS does things and completely cocked up remote disk access in the process. I find it amusing because Apple enthusiasts generally give the impression that they consider Microsoft to be run by the devil and that they don't give a toss about the consumer. However, Microsoft have a great track record of backward compatibility. I am reasonably confident that I could run 10 year old programs on my new Win 7 box (whilst using my shiny new NAS drive for storage) without issues. But good old Apple have just made it impossible for some programs that were released last month to operate.
The real parallel here is with IBM. At one time they got so big and powerful that they could impose changes which impacted users' ability to use their old software with the latest versions of their OS's (how do you write the plural of OS?). I'm thinking of zOS where features just disappeared from one release to the next.
I'm no lover of Microsoft, but I would be REALLY PISSED OFF if I had just updated my OS only to find that it wouldn't now play with my networked drives. So, please allow me to feel slightly smug while Apple attempt to explain why it is everyone else's fault that their new OS means that lots of software just stopped working.
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