The explorer toolbars you could write for Windows died a quiet death with Windows 10, and little came of it. If you can hook up a toolbar, this API in Windows 11 is installed again.

Windoes 8 also destroyed a lot of tools with the full-screen start menu, although the toolbars in the explorer continued to work there.

Unfortunately, breaking changes to the structure of your operating system is the norm. Microsoft used to score very well on this, but nowadays it’s quite disappointing.

Personally, I think the extra screen space on both sides is only an advantage, as long as one can turn these chips off to run the old stuff. Anyway, the old stuff is of course undergoing the transition from x64 to ARM, and while Rosetta is pretty good, emulating something like that is absolutely impossible. Errors will appear sooner or later if you have not updated your software for a long time.

A prototype of a new screen for developers would have been a luxury indeed, but things like this are now the norm at big companies, unfortunately. You can run programs early, but often you don’t get dummies.

When the Essential P1 first got the notch we know now (in Android country Apple has always been bigger and (in my eyes) uglier, and I don’t count the LG V10 because it uses a separate screen) in the world, there were no development kits available either. In the long run, simulators were given support to put cracks in all kinds of places, but that took a while. I don’t know if there is an API for Windows at all for the new round screens, but if there is, then nothing will be announced before Microsoft introduces their screen.

Of course, the developers had to recreate their screenshots to make sure everyone tested their app with the new screen layout and eliminated any major bugs. The timing of this was quite unfortunate, but I think the process is really positive for the user experience of the platform.

When you develop for Apple, you have a somewhat separate relationship with the platform as a developer. Many platforms cater to good developer relationships so that the integration works well, but at Apple, their idea of ​​what a customer wants always comes before what you want as a developer. I avoid the platform like the plague myself, because I won’t be able to handle it, but completely unexpected moves like this haven’t been taken for five years now. Thus, post-release test rounds are part of the process, or at least they should be.

I don’t see any problem with the fix. You have to buy new parts for the new screen anyway, two displays above the LCD is not much work compared to the current procedure. Third parties already have to hack the Apple connector and standard on their screen, so I expect they’ll also produce these types of screens in the long run. It would be easy to add two rows of pixels to existing screens, but obviously not impossible. After all, there are also alternatives to phones with this design.