Why did Microsoft skip Windows 9?
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X, perhaps? (Score:2)
What, so suggestion of envy of Apple's roman numeral OS?
Failed QA (Score:5, Funny)
When they sent the new version of Windows to QA, was marked with a big X on it to signify that it should be discarded. This was mistaken for the roman numeral, so they changed the version number to a 10.
I'm kidding, of course -- they don't have QA (as evidenced by Win 8).
Re: (Score:3)
They can have the best damn QA in the world, if the parameters of their work is set by bumbling idiots it'll result in Windows 8 regardless.
Re:Failed QA (Score:4)
They had QA, the product met all the design criteria and operated as designed.
The design just sucked.
Re:X, perhaps? (Score:5, Funny)
Try pronouncing that out loud and you can probably figure out why they didn't spring for that name.
Re: (Score:2)
I would rather they went for "Windows XE"
Re:X, perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer X windows
Re:X, perhaps? (Score:5, Funny)
Whoa! You just gave me flashbacks of X / Motif coding. Time to curl up into a ball and suck my thumb until the bad thoughts go away.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why not, they previously went with Windows Sex Pee...
Re:X, perhaps? (Score:5, Funny)
Windows OS X -- Leo Pard
Windows OS X -- Snowl Epard
(sorry, the 1st one, Mount'n Lyin' brazenly copied from a comment on Ars)
Or as I've heard suggested elsewhere, Microsoft could use the <adjective> <animal> naming convention:
Abscessed Albatross
Bubonic Bat
Chlamydic Chigger
Dyspeptic Deertick
. . .
Masturbating Monkey
etc.
Buy why would Microsoft scrap Windows 9 and go to Windows 10?
Because Microsoft had promised Windows 9 as a free upgrade to (some) Windows 8 users, and viewed this as a way to screw over Windows 8 users a second time. (cue evil laughter and mustache twirling)
Notice Windows 9 on Wikipedia now redirects to Windows 10.
Linux to Microsoft: Changing the name or the graphics won't make you cool.
Apple to Microsoft: Culture is more than something that grows in your ears.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If they are going to skip numbers, why stop there?
Apple is on 10, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, they're on 10 on their OS. Where can you go from there? Put it up to 11. Exactly. One louder.
Re: X, perhaps? (Score:5, Funny)
Who said they were smart? (Score:2)
Maybe they forgot 9 was a number
Re: (Score:2)
You beat me to it.... I like the idea of calling in "Windows One-Zero"
Re:Who said they were smart? (Score:5, Funny)
There are 10 kinds of people ...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
... those that know ternary, those that don't, and those who think I'm making a joke about binary.
Re:Who said they were smart? (Score:5, Funny)
I think the next release should use cuneiform numerals, just to differentiate from the Roman numerals in OS X releases.
That was the plan.
But then they realised that wouldn't work as slashdot still doesn't have working unicode support.
Internationalism (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Internationalism (Score:5, Informative)
Windows, nein!
You beat me to it.
Not just 9 (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What of 11 through 94? 96? 97? 99 through 1,999?
Re: (Score:3)
5 was 2000/XP, Vista was 6. But seriously, I'm wondering why they're skipping 9
Re:Not just 9 (Score:5, Informative)
Interestingly, Windows 7 was 6.1, Windows 8 was 6.2, and Windows 8.1 was 6.3
Basically the numbering system between marketing and development don't even scale the same way.
Re: (Score:2)
development does that (I've heard) so drivers won't freak out at a major number change.
Re:Not just 9 (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
With the platform going from NT 6.3 to 6.4, is the "Windows 10" label possibly a means to get the two tracks back in somewhat of a sync? (i.e. 6.4 => 6+4 = 10?)
Re: Not just 9 (Score:2)
My bet's on concurrent projects got rolled together, not unlike Win 98/Win NT=>WinXP
It was supposed to be Windows 9... (Score:5, Funny)
... but the machine used to create the version number was running on a Pentium.
Re:It was supposed to be Windows 9... (Score:5, Informative)
Good Work sir.
Re: (Score:3)
were that the case it would be Windows 9.974 :)
They're 2 for 3! (Score:5, Funny)
There are only two hard things in computer science: caching, naming, and off-by-1 errors
Re: (Score:2)
Re: your .sig: agreed, or we could out of spite start using Unicode notation >:]
Re: (Score:2)
You're naïvely assuming that Windows 10 will have working caching.
Windows one-zero (Score:2)
Windows 2 for those that read binary...
If you exclude the parallel NT's...nope (Score:2)
They're incrementing back towards being in line but still, what?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
windows 3.0 = version 3.0
windows 3.1 = version 3.1
windows 95 = version 4.0
windows 98 = version 4.10
windows me = ???
windows XP = version 5
windows vista version 6
windows 7 = version 6.1
windows 8 = version 6.2
windows 8.1 = version 6.3
windows 10 = ???
Re: (Score:3)
Lineage before XP is not 95/98/me, it is Windows NT 4.x, 3.x and OS/2 1.x
Re: (Score:3)
windows me = ???
windows 10 = ???
Windows ME = 4.90
Windows 10 = 6.4
Re: (Score:2)
You will note that the evens were all duds.
Re: (Score:2)
I wanted Windows 96, but all they had was 95B! (Score:2)
For FAT-32, it was worth it.
Re: (Score:2)
95c w/usb support... I have a copy in my disc case nostalgia keeps from tossing it out.
Copying Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
It seemed like they polled some important people, and found that "10" had more positive connotations than "9" for an operating system. Of course, it has those positive connotations because Apple has been branding MacOS X as a great operating system for the last 13 years, especially compared to MacOS 9. [arstechnica.com]
It might work. From my perspective, Windows 10 is just Windows 8 with some more incremental improvements and pretty much every recommendation for integrating Metro and desktop that somebody wrote years ago... I forgot who it was, and it's really hard to search for. But for ordinary business people who have been avoiding Windows 8, Windows 10 is a big change compared to Windows 7, and a dramatic improvement on Windows XP.
Anticipating next year (Score:2)
playing catch up (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, what version is the current Apple OS?
10.9
What version are we shipping, here at Microsoft?
Windows 8.1
CRAP! We're behind. Way behind.
I know... We can call the next version Windows 11!
No, that's too obvious. It'll lead to the inevitable "Turn it up to 11" jokes.
What's Apple's next version?
10.10
Really? Well, then, We'll call it Windows 10. That way we don't look like losers back in 8 point something land.
That's a Great Idea! We'll call it Windows 10 and tell everyone our version 10 is way better than their version 10. We'll do demos and promos and PR tours. It's perfect.
Re: (Score:2)
what version is Google Chrome on now? 37?
IE is WAAAY behind.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's a Great Idea! We'll call it Windows 10 and tell everyone our version 10 is way better than their version 10. We'll do demos and promos and PR tours. It's perfect.
Don't forget the talk show circuit... Also, make sure that we are booked to go on before those #$%#% pan-dimensional mice beings talking about "Life, the Universe and Everything". What ever that is... Next to those guys, Windows 10 will look amazing!!
Trying to dispel the even/odd rule (Score:3)
Trying to dispel it, or trying to conform to it? "Fair warning guys..."
Re: (Score:3)
Who cares? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know if they'll come back from this one or not,
I don't think people go back to Windows unless they're forced to.
Re: (Score:2)
um... the current branch is out of the NT stable, so forget 3.11, 95, 98, and ME they're all DOS based (NT3.1 and 3.51 are early-out-the-gate NT kernels from their association with IBM). That leaves Windows NT4, 2000 (NT5.0), xp2002/Server2003 (same kernel) (which is 5.1), Vista/Server 2008 (NT6.0) and 7/Server 2008R2 (NT6.1), 8/Server 2012/R2 (NT6.2 and .3)... it's all here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org] The rhyme and reason is 80% marketing and 20% kernel difference. The leap from NT5.1 to NT5.2, for
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux is indeed better. Not because of Open Source (the code doesn't care) but because it has fewer bugs (about 0.1% of the bugs per kloc), non-intrusive strong security (rated EAL 5+ on conformant hardware, conforms to B2 Orange Book standards), superior multi-processor support, superior memory management and superior networking.
Graphics? Not an OS issue. That's a GUI issue. Never confuse how something gets data with what it then does with it. The GUI is not central to Windows (as demonstrated by console mode startup, but should be obvious to anyone running it as a headless server). The core OS functions are, and always have been, resource management, virtualization, security and stability. (Filesystems are virtual layers on top of physical disks, so are resource management and virtualization.)
Linux is better at the things an OS is meant to do. Windows has an adequate GUI, but the OS is abysmal. Besides sales, the only reason the game industry likes Windows is that it has useful libraries - DirectX (an alternative to the functions the GUI itself provides) and easy access to GPU functions (bypassing the OS altogether, running on bare metal).
The reason Linux doesn't have these? Look in the mirror. The face you see was quite capable of working on GGI, KGI or Linux Framebuffers, of helping in the Berlin project, of submitting patches for SDL or Avagadro, or even hacking Wine to improve support for DirectX, CUDA or other graphical features.
I'm no innocent myself, but I own up to my guilt, I don't blame the OS (which IS innocent).
Re: (Score:3)
Excel? (Score:2)
Exponential versioning (Score:3)
It's actually in hex, you see, and Microsoft is going to win the versioning war by going exponential. It will become obvious in the version after that when 0x10 (16) is followed by 0x20 (32) but by then it will be too late for the competition to catch up!
They were considering using 2^x -1 to get past the "never trust an even number" rule but a summer intern pointed out that "Microsoft Windows F" might be tough sell.
why no 9? (Score:5, Funny)
Because of Ze Germans, no one wants Windows Nien!
Windows Nein (Score:2)
At least, that's my answer.
Re: (Score:3)
Windows
The
For those who don't speak German.
Even worse ... (Score:2)
Nine? nein nein nein! (Score:5, Funny)
Windows Nein just had a wrong sound to it.
Re:Nine? nein nein nein! (Score:5, Funny)
Windows Nein just had a wrong sound to it.
I heard that requires the .NYET framework
I say distancing from Windows 8. (Score:2)
The way to really distance oneself from Windows 8 is to step up to OS X 10.9 . A new version of this is in the works, and they won't have to bludgeon users of the existing system into upgrading to it.
Welcome to "Windows Can't Count Edition" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing it was a decision made at an executive management retreat. And alcohol was involved.
If you recall, they wanted to get on the "rapid release" train, and Windows "8.1" was probably supposed to be Windows 9. But, you know, that pesky reality and all. So now they think they can catch up just by bumping the number.
The real problem here is that Microsoft has run out of anything useful to add to their OS. So now they are running around in circles trying to find ways to take things away, or fuck things up so people think they need yet another version.
Honestly, bumping it to "10" makes no sense whatsoever. If they wanted to give it some weird alternative fancy name like "Selenium Edition", ":P", "Xista", or whatever, that would at least make some sense. But this is just... stupid.
All "Windows 10" tells me is that they can't count, and we shouldn't count on Microsoft.
For now I am going to call it "Windows Can't Count Edition".
Re: (Score:3)
They haven't run out of useful things to do - they are just stuck in a dark nasty place of having too much legacy support. I would love to see them start clean, run a win 7/8 whatever in a virtual machine, and build from scratch with all the lessons they have learned over the years.
Never happen but they could build an amazing OS if they took that approach.
Re: (Score:3)
Which sadly they don't quite get right, which is why I have Win98, Win2k, winXP and now a Win7 box for things that are halted by conflicts with later editions. I can understand the earlier stuff due to various VBrun fuckups, similar DLL hell, and hardware drivers, but I really do not get why some legacy support that was in Win7 got cut out of Win8.
They can't even support their
Politics (Score:2)
"IX" is a little too close to "IS" for some palates.
Re: (Score:2)
So call it "Ford Prefect".
I don't know... (Score:2)
...but what's "Windows" anyway?
So they can sell it to Mac users too (Score:2)
OS 10 by Microsoft. Can be used on Macs (EFI vi bootcamp) and PCs.
Firefox (Score:2)
Firefox is up to version 32. Behold how its awesomeness has increased!
Who would ever want a puny version 9?
Cars have reached the 1000's, with the Saab 9000 being the best car ever. However, cars now are versioned in hexadecimal (or something like it).
Copying Gillette (Score:2)
Afraid of lawsuit (Score:2)
They were afraid of getting sued by Microware
So they can call it Windows X (Score:2)
Windows X.
Because every marketing guy knows that putting an 'X' in the name of you product makes it sell better. You gotta admit, WinX looks better than Win9 in forum posts.
Seems like Microsoft is Apple's biggest fan boy these days, first they run a big marketing campaign comparing the Surface to the Macbook Air now they are trying to copy Apple's OS branding. How much you want to bet they will even throw a big cat name on there: Windows X "Puma".
You know Microsoft, imitation is the greatest form of flatt
Re: (Score:2)
Pentium bug workaround (Score:2)
X or 10 or 1010 (Score:2)
maybe it's so far off people will think that 9 has come and gone. (I was always happy to believe that MacOSX was named after their earlier AUX efforts)
Why would anyone get mad over a version number? (Score:2)
Not the first time they skipped some numbers (Score:2)
Windows Nein (Score:2)
They didn't like the homophone that would be used.
Even/Odd rule. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nein! (Score:2)
follow the numbers (Score:2)
windows 2.0, meh
windows 3.0/3.1/3.5/3.51 amazing.
windows 95, bob's lounge and rover his annoying dog, absolute crap.
windows 98/98se, great.
windows ME, garbage.
windows XP, the new standard for microsoft.
windows vista, buggy garbage.
windows 7, quite nice, almost as good as XP.
windows 8, wtf were you guys thinking.
windows 9, was going to be great.
well now we cant put out a good OS so lets skip forward to 10 and throw out another piece of trash.
clearly brand confusion (Score:2)
They were afraid people would confuse windows 9 with Plan 9 from bell labs.
Microsoft simply can't count (Score:4, Funny)
Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox 1
Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10.
I'm a little surprised they aren't calling it Windows One.
OS String Issues (Score:5, Insightful)
if ( osStr.startsWith("Windows 9") || orStr.equals("Windows ME") )
throw new RuntimeException("OS too old");
Re: (Score:3)
Wanted to mod this 'funny'.... But then stopped... It is M$... so 'informative' might be more appropriate.
Re:OS String Issues (Score:5, Informative)
It is sad... https://searchcode.com/?q=if%28version%2Cstartswith%28%22windows+9%22%29
This one is easy. (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows 10 IS Windows 9. Microsoft engineers are even still calling it Windows 9. The source tree is the same, there have been no major changes.
What has happened is that Windows 9 has been getting very bad press and is still riddled with bugs. Instead of releasing a version number nobody will buy and would only have to patch almost immediately anyway, OR getting slagged off for Yet Another Delayed Release, Microsoft is renaming it version 10 and delaying the release until the bugs are sorted.
You will observe Microsoft has been talking up Windows 9 for some time, but now all talk (and apparently all memory) of it has ceased. Newspapers suffering amnesia is amost acceptable. Slashdotters??? WTF??? I'm sorry, but there is no-one in or around IT that has a single, solitary excuse.
Windows 9x (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
same reason there won't be a windows 13
You sure? There could be an ace buddy film starring Tom Hanks as Paul Allen, Macaulay Culkin as Bill Gates and Mike Myers as Fat Bastard.
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't the Simpsons already do that?
Re: (Score:3)
Every second release is ok, every second one is a turkey.
This way they get to skip a decent release and can have two turkeys in a row.
Re: (Score:2)
We all recognize the "every other release of Windows sucks" pattern, but their official naming schemes have only used sequential numbers with 2, 3, 7, and 8. (95 and 98 were clearly year identifiers, and don't fit their pattern.) 3 and 7 were good, and they were odd numbers. Not sure why they went with an even number this time.
I was recently lunching with a 'softie who called this their "Oh-god-we-are-soooo-sorry-about-the-whole-Windows-8-thing-and-we-promise-never-to-do-it-again release." To me that su
Re: (Score:3)