It looks like Apple has finally seen the light and will be dumping backwards compatibility in the next major OS release. With this announcement, I'm sure many old 68K Mac owners are pissed...but then again, if they don't plan to upgrade to a new PowerMac eventually, why should Apple give a hoot what they say? Anybody who remains with the 68K is obviously not in need of the kind of power a REAL OS will give them, or they'd move to a semi-current computer anyway.
Backward software compatibility is a nice thing to a certain degree. I'm certain some group (possibly even apple) will come out with a shell which will run old Apps through the new MicroKernel-based OS (such things are much easier to do with a true microkernal than they are under the current MacOS...Windows Emulation should get a big speed boost, too). However, just as Apple made a revolution happen when they broke with the standard of DOS and AppleDOS, without providing backwards compatibility, remaining tied to the past OSes can do nothing but slow down forward progress. They've basically admitted that this is what has been causing most of the delays: trying to keep Copland compatible with system 7.5 was killing them.
Look at what is possible with BeOS on a system based on two ultra-wimpy 66Mhz 603's....it can run as many QT movies at the same time as a 200Mhz 604e system can!
