I've read that Microsoft says "Vista is fully compatible with the vast majority of existing Windows applications" (
Wired, 2005).
Perhaps I'm the odd one out, but personally, I think that is a bad move.
Seems to me a lot of the problems with XP come from the fact that is has tried to remain compatible with Windows 95/98 apps. I think Apple had it right when they decided to build Mac OS X from scratch and not worry about backwards compatibility. This gave them huge amounts of freedom to create an OS that was modern, and catered for today's tech needs.
The article referenced is pretty outdated (form August), so does anyone know if this is still the case? As much as I love seeing MS fail, I'd still like them to make a decent OS for once.
They've stolen everything else from OS X, they may as well add a "Classic"-style WinXP emulator in Vista as well!