...and cause applications using them to stop working.

What's more important here? Nebulous security threats or software that actually works?

Software that actually works of course, but that only happens with stable APIs, ABIs and certainly not with removing them no matter how planned and preannounced that might be (both because most will ignore things since what they do already works and doing something different just to get the same results is most of the time a waste of time but also because in many cases the software is simply not possible to upgrade/change due to other issues, including the developer not existing anymore).

> "What's more important here? Nebulous security threats or software that actually works?"

Sounds like something would've Intel said internally before Meltdown / Spectre were discovered.

And they were right, because despite all the cries of the sky falling from the security twonks of the world, it really hasn't been that big a deal.