Re: Going from 32 to 64 bit was so simple nobody really noticed it happened
XP 64 was intended for very specific uses, not general purpose, as it was basically a neutered version of Windows Server 2003. It would run the apps that needed access to plenty of memory (as they would normally be designed for Windows Server) without the cost of a Windows Server license.
To be fair, Alpha and Itanium were the only non Intel architectures that really succeeded. The other platforms didn't survive beyond NT4 SP3 (I think some gave up at SP1, i.e. immediately..).
It's also worth mentioning, as has been noted above, that platforms are decidedly unequal on Unix. For the major commercial Unixes, I don't think Solaris Intel was *that* different to Solaris Sparc, except for functionality specifically enabled by the Sparc architecture. On the free Unix side there are many differences : the booting process varies wildly, some platforms don't have X, or support a very limited set of graphics cards. Then after finding that the platform does support X, and networking, none of the major browsers are supported as the build process and dependencies are considerable...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
