Why did Micro$oft announce Windows 9 and call it Windows 10?

[Earth Bound Misfit]

Last edited Sat Oct 4, 2014, 03:34 AM - Edit history (2)

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/09/the-next-version-of-windows-will-be-windows-10/

Terry Myerson, executive vice president for the Operating System Group, said that the new release represented such a shift in Microsoft's approach to delivering Windows and in what Windows will be—able to span everything from an Internet-of-Things gizmo to a phone to a tablet to a PC to a server—that calling it Windows 9 wouldn't be big enough to capture the differences.

Given the rest of the company's One-themed branding (Xbox One, OneDrive, OneNote, and such), Myerson said that calling the new OS Windows One was logical—but it turns out that a guy called Bill Gates already did that back in the 1980s. So the company went for Windows 10 instead.

Apple did the same thing with its OS more than a decade ago and has stayed there ever since. Microsoft's new brand opens the door to both major desktop operating systems being version ten... forever.

5 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Because everyone is talking about the name rather than how butt-fugly the OS looks and the lack of any significant new features.
	0 (0%)
	Because Vista = 6, 7 was actually Vista SP3, ergo 8 = 7 and 8.1 actually = 8, so that STILL makes 10 version 9, and I've no CLUE why they called it 10. Or something like that...I'm SO confused...
	0 (0%)
	Because they want Windows 7 users to have the sentiment that yesterday they were driving a first-generation Prius, and now with Windows 10 it's like we got them a Tesla. (actual quote from some M$ dim-bulb)
	0 (0%)
	Because they didn't want to call it Windows OS X, Mounting Lying.
	0 (0%)
	10, because 7 ate 9.
	2 (40%)
	Because it was leaked that Windows 8 users would get a free upgrade to Windows 9......which of course doesn't exist but HEY, it's FREE!
	1 (20%)
	Because they figured 8 was so wretchedly awful that any version called 9 would be judged guilty by association.
	1 (20%)
	Because...Benghazi! Obama! Muslins! Librulz!
	0 (0%)
	Other, please explain below.
	1 (20%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[CurtEastPoint]

1. Because...Benghazi.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

2. Of course....

Adding to Poll.

[ChromeFoundry]

3. A Microsoft developer was working in the cafeteria

...running Fedora on a laptop, because he needed to get some actual work done.

A curious intern asks, "Is that NEW Windows?"
The developer replied, "Yeah, it's got Windows, 'LOL'."
The intern snaps a picture of the desktop and texts it to his friends... "new Windows LOL"

As one person texts the image to another.. the translation simply got lost due to auto-correction.

"Windows LOL"
"Windows Lol"
"Windows lol"
"Windows lo"
"Windows 10"

[Earth Bound Misfit]

7. ***SNICKER*** nm

[Gore1FL]

4. I suspect they were going with 9 but rebuilt core components

They upped it to 10 after that for internal consistency. (This also explains what appears to be a delayed release.)

[RoccoR5955]

5. Because windoze 9 is already out there...

It's called Windows 8.1. Actually, if you go to a command prompt, and type in "ver" you will find that is is VERSION 6.3.
Which seems to me that the base core kernel of the OS has not change since version 6.0 or Vista. Vista was a steaming pile, so they put a new front end on it and called it "7," when it should actually be called 6.1, but mickeysoft couldn't sell that so they added the numbers to get what they want.

And if you do a ver of Windows "10" you will actually find that it version 6.4

[Earth Bound Misfit]

6. I respectfully disagree...

I updated choice #2 explaining why 10 is still actually 9.

[RoccoR5955]

8. It is NOT version 9

Do a ver command in Windows 8.1, and you will see that it is actually VERSION 6.3.
It may be windows EDITION 9, but it is NOT version nine. There is a big difference.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

9. Ummm Dude...

My "logic" was meant tongue-in-cheek, I guess I didn't convey that very well.

OTOH, Check out these results from Belarc Advisor run on my Tech Preview install:

[gvstn]

10. I have only run 10 for an hour and mostly web browsing.

I didn't think it was particularly ugly. I still don't understand why they think being boxy is a good thing?

Overall, I thought it was a decent overhaul of 8. I don't really see any advantage over win7 in terms of winning over businesses still running XP and getting them to buy a more secure OS but I thought it was definitely a more viable option than Win8 would ever be.

One thing that perhaps you could clarify is that I thought that Win8 rewrote some of the core components of Windows. So Win7 would have an older core code under the GUI and Win8 had something newer. When you show that they are all still 6.xx it does seem that they may not be the case. Do you remember reading anything about the basic "kernel" having been rewritten for win8?

From my limited testing of Win8 and Win10 preview they do seem slightly faster than Win7 (My win7 is a two year old install so not exactly streamlined). But my Win7 is on SSD and I am testing Win10 on a very old 5400RPM IDE drive and yet the Win10 is very fast responding except for startup and shutdown.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

11. "It's still NT 6, the same OS model & code base."

That's the answer I got from my family 'Puter guru. Me? I could barely tell the difference between Kernel & Colonel lmao.

I've also done a little testing on 10, I set up a 30gb partition on an SSD & will say this; installation via USB stick was VERY fast... it booted "press any key" to the M$ Account sign-in page in the time it took me to go outside, smoke a cig & guzzle a bottle of Poland Springs. I didn't notice that it was any faster than 7 but then I've tweaked the he!! out of my 7 to be faster. Computer crashed once resuming from sleep and had a few hiccups w Ex-PLODE-r. Tomorrow I'll try some more vigorous stuff.

[gvstn]

12. We have 6 months to test.

I just thought it was a lot better than Win8 since that one seemed to crash on me quite a bit. I wasn't impressed by their newer System Restore options such as "Refresh" which didn't really work as advertised. I'll have to break Win10, and then see how their recovery options work. The fact that Win7 rarely breaks so bad that it requires a fresh install and thus unexpectedly losing any personal settings is what sold me on it over XP.

I should really reinstall my Win7 after 2 years but haven't really felt the need since I haven't had any crashes on this install. With XP, I installed every 6 mos. whether I needed it or not as I really saw a difference in speed. Testing Win8 and Win10, I can see that my current Win7 install is running a bit slow. A fresh install will allow me to evaluate more fairly.

I'm not trashing Win10 yet, but agree from what I see it is not worth paying to update from Win7 to Win10. I might pay to go from Win8 to Win10 however since Win8 had such a terrible user interface. Microsoft trying to get XP users to update should forget the App instead of Program naming crap and just design a more secure OS that can run old financial/accounting programs in a more secure environment. Call it Windows for Business or something.

[hobbit709]

13. I consider going from 8 to 7 an upgrade.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

14. FWIW, I did an unscientific comparison...

Rebooted 7 & 10 3 times each, measured the time with a simple .VBS... the best times are recorded below



Both on same drive - 128gb SSD, Core i3 processor.