Microsoft Word

Perhaps or perhaps not...

When DOCX and XLSX came out Microsoft released a free patch that allowed all previous versions of their programs to save, edit and open them.

As for winZip, there has been a paid for version for, possibly, decades, windows can now handle zip files natively so you don't need it unless you want all the fancy extras of the pro version, so the free version is now redundant.

Neil

Isn't that exactly what happens when something new like camlock or INT taper is introduced? If you use the newer machines you have to accept your older tooling will become redundant.

Neil

Yes, to a point. For a start, engineering standards don't change so often that they worry us as amateur engineers.

Also, the new standards do not mean we cannot find new owners for our equipment, because rather than rapid replacement they tend to add to the range.

We can use Morse or R8 tooling for example, because although industry now generally uses the INT series, there are still plenty of users and buyers of older machine-tools and fittings still serviceable decades after manufacture - and there are plenty of the smaller machine-tools and tooling using the Morse, possibly also R8, tapers still being made.

I know some tooling standards have fallen by the wayside (I never identified my IXL/ Erhlich lathe's spindle taper!), and BS / BA fastenings are disappearing, with the American inch-based UN series possibly following suit - but these are gradual, evolutionary rather than revolutionary, changes.

The IT trade's model is to make sweeping changes every few years and render anything in its older forms as unusable as rapidly as possible. Some reflects genuine electronics development but a lot of changes are just tinkering for nakedly commercial reasons.

People like Whitworth introduced standards to help engineering, not hinder it, by ensuring both interchangeability and long-term continuity.

MS and its ilk manipulate standards to obstruct while maximising profits, by technically-needless changes that stifle interchanging and prevent continuity.