Windows 10 is the official name for Microsoft's next version of Windows | Hacker News Reader

Windows 10 is the official name for Microsoft's next version of Windows

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82 pointsguardian5x67 comments

Lol there was an April fools' article last year saying the same thing http://www.infoworld.com/article/2613504/microsoft-windows/m...

Nope, it's actually "9", but it's expressed in Base 9, so, "10".

We should all refuse to call it anything other than "Windows 9 base 9".

I'd prefer "Windows 10 base 10, base 9"

From the people who brought you the Xbox 360 (2nd Xbox) and the Xbox One (3rd Xbox)...

there was a massive internal debate to talk the marketing dept down from naming it Windows 10 Live Active Desktop 2015 Home Edition

They have pretty good marketing people. I imagine that debate would usually go in the opposite direction from the one you describe.

I'm sure there will be enough editions to confuse the average buyer. And different upgrade paths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions#Comparison_c...

The average buyer isn't confused by which version to use. They use the one that comes with their computer, or if they really want to upgrade on the same computer, the one that is on the shelf at Best Buy.

This feels embarrassingly cringe-worthy. Did they just skip a number for no reason?

What's wrong with Windows 9? Too simple?

Putting the same Windows on all devices is a pretty amazing achievement. From a marketing point of view, it seems logical to stamp it with a milestone version number too. Particularly one with a little distance from 8...

I doubt its the going to be the "same" Windows on all devices considering all the different device architectures involved. At best they'll all feel the same which is great but would probably be just as much of a hassle from a developer point-of-view.

the WinRT architecture is using .net (more or less) so developing for different type basically only requires different inputs and displays. everything else is more or less exactly the same

"As part of that, the company has reiterated its commitment to creating a single app Store across all of its devices.

Windows 10 will work across all form-factors and as such, developers will only need to code once but they’ll be able to target any device."

http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-10-one-app-store-across-a...

My guess is that they skipped 9 to demonstrate just how much better than Windows 8 this release will (they hope) be. And I must say, as a bit of marketing I think it's not bad -- it (and the release of 8.1) really makes you feel like they take the criticisms of Windows 8 very seriously. It remains to be seen, of course, whether they can put that into practice.

Also 7 8 9.

My guess is that they skipped 9 to demonstrate just how much better than Windows 8 this release will (they hope) be. And I must say, as a bit of marketing I think it's not bad

Like Slackware Linux, which went straight from 4.0 to 7.0 ;).

Ha. I've love to see them backpedal on this.

'We were wrong to jump right to 10, but wanted to show how much beyond 9 we are. So instead:'

Introducing Windows 911

What part of it was cringe-worthy particularly?

Perhaps it's too similar to Windows 95 and 98?

If they're skipping why not just fast forward to Windows 2014 (or 15).

That would keep up with SQL Server 2014 and Visual Studio, etc.

This actually could be it. Too much legacy code that checks for "Windows 9*".

This hypothesis is supported by this redditor's comment, who is apparently an MS dev: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2hwlrk/new_windo...

Also supported by this code search, which turns up a few classes in the JDK using this sort of check: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2i14ny/if_osnam...

Actual quote from the presentation: "It wouldn't be right to call it Windows 9."

He skated right past the why, though

Maybe they are just trying to convince all the "what I have is good enough" people that they are getting behind? Microsoft does have a huge legacy problem. XP has the second largest market share.

Really, what they need to go is get some inspired sequel names from the guys at Capcom or ArcSys Works. I'm not sure about Windows 10, but I'd upgrade to Windows 9 Super Turbo HD Remix or Windows Chrono Phantasma in a heartbeat.

I honestly liked the fact that they skipped the Odd number 9.

Window 9 ? Reminds me of Windows 98. Windows 10 does seem much better.

They probably want to distance themselves as much as possible from the massive flop that has been.

Rumors on the internet[1] suggest that Microsoft is moving to a more incremental update cadence, and, correspondingly, there will never be another major version release of Windows. If that's the case, I'd wager they didn't want to be stuck "a version behind" Mac OS X forever.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/windows-threshold-and-cadence-how-fast-...

Go easy on them. They're just trying to catch up with OS X!

I don't like the appearance of Live Tiles in the Start Menu. They aren't really related functions. It's a compromise.

I kind of like it. It makes sense for something like Weather, which is information you want at-a-glance but you don't want to see all the time like on the start screen. On previous versions of Windows, there'd be links to My Documents and Control Panel and such, but I'd rather use search to find that stuff.

If links to Documents and Control Panel can be added via those tiles, I think we'd have a win-win

Yeah, It would be nice to have things like CPU usage and RAM available at a glance sometimes.

Taking a cue from the PHP internals team.

Or is it Windows X?

Windows 10.1, Windows 10.2 I think I've seen this somewhere before...

ArcGIS from ESRI? (It's for Windows only, you may not have heard of it ;)

They probably would have used that if it weren't for the x windowing system.

Why should that stop them.

Similar naming didn't stop Apple from releasing MAC OS 9, when Microware OS-9 already existed.

Or, you know, OSX

Windows X codename Cheetah

https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea/status/516998685386100736

"Maybe if we skip a version number, they'll think it's an even newer and better version..."

No but my guess is that 8 bombed so hard that they didn't want to sell it as 9 since that would make it specifically a successor to 8 (which it is, but we wouldn't want the consumers to know). Same way we got 7 instead of Vista 2 or whatever. They want 10 to seem like a new hip thing instead of a desperate attempt to fix their mess.

Although Belfiore stresses that this preview only shows a glimpse of the changes in Win10, it's striking that it only shows that Microsoft is making it more like "classic" Windows again. To be honest, apps run now in normal windows - this is such a no-brainer, it should have been there from the start.

There was never really any consistent list of Windows versions you could come up with that would lead to "Windows 7" actually being the 7th version. So it's not like the numbers mean much anyway. Why not 10? [1]

[1] Maybe they should have gone for 11, since it's one more.

"Q: Now it's Windows 10, will we see future versions named after big cats?

A: Probably not."

Love the look of the start menu.

They're not taking any chances. From Wikipedia: "The Japanese consider nine to be unlucky because in Japanese the word for nine sounds similar to the word for "pain" or "distress"

"We believe that, together with the feedback you provide us, we can build a product that all of our customers will love," Myerson said. "It will be our most open collaborate OS projects ever."

followed by

Q: When it comes to your enterprise customers about Windows 10. How big has the push back been to get Windows away from Live Tiles, back to Windows 7 stuff?

A: We don't hear pushback that we don't like Live Tiles. We hear pushback about too much training.

So basically "together with your feedback" means "we'll ignore your feedback if it conflicts with a design decision we've already made"

Not sure why you would draw that conclusion. Do you really think people have a problem with the live tiles themselves? That's like saying users are opposed to "icons". Live Tiles are simply icons on steroids.

The Q&A sounded to me like he's saying there's nothing wrong with the Live Tiles, but the UI was simply not lernable especially the dichotomy between tablet/desktop mode. They want to fix the latter problem, but don't see a need to ditch live tiles.

Live tiles were one of the most contentious parts of Windows 8!

My impression has always been that people misuse the term live tiles to mean the general interface. While I've heard people complain about about the "live tile interface", I don't think I've actually heard a complaint about live tiles vs static icons.

Then why would the interviewer specifically bring them up as an example of what people have complained about?

As a misnomer, while the speaker answered talking about live tiles themselves. At least that's my interpretation, per my initial reply.

How I read it:

"Q: How are you responding to push back regarding live tiles? A: We actually didn't see push back from live tiles, but learnability. We are addressing the latter."

Of course, they'll probably undermine their claims of it being leaps and bounds past 8 by making the internal version 6.4

Was 7 really called 7 because it was the 7th version of the NT kernel? If so, then 7, 8, 8.1(9), 10 makes sense sorta kinda.

2000 (5), XP (5.1), Vista (6), 7 (6.1), 8 (6.2), 8.1 (6.3)

And Windows 10 will be 6.4.

It just doesn't make any sense.

One popular theory is that there is software out there that checks for Windows version == 6 instead of >= 6 when deciding to enable features for Vista and above. This was definitely true of libcurl at one point, for example.

In that case, my vote is for Windows X to be version 6.3.1.

Windows 7 was NT 6.1.

Windows 8 was NT 6.2.

They were called that because marketing.

They had to distance themselves from 8.

Is 8 have that bad of a reputation. I bought a laptop last year and once I figured out how to get it to start on desktop mode I've been happily using 8 like I was 7. Barely spend anytime in the Start screen. What else is there that people don't like about 8?

People who are still on Win7 mostly associate it with the death of the start menu. What's more, for desktop users it barely has any huge improvements over 7. At least that's my impression.

I always know I'm using Windows 7 at work because I really miss the much improved task manager and file transfer screen that Windows 8 has.

Plus I'm running an anti-virus. That's a big tell than you're on an outdated OS.

What is wrong with Windows 9? Why don't Microsoft win by merit instead of silly marketing naming game?

What is wrong with Mac OS11? Apple keeps going with OSX because it's so marketable. What is wrong with Linux kernel 2.6? Linus bumped the version number purely for marketing (after saying he would not bump the version number).

Version numbers are pure marketing anyway.

Guy needs a hair cut.

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