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Yeah, I'm aware of the history. It adds more context to the mess but doesn't really make it sensible. As for why they skipped 9, I believe I did hear a good re
by jkaplowitz 6y ago
Yeah, I'm aware of the history. It adds more context to the mess but doesn't really make it sensible.
As for why they skipped 9, I believe I did hear a good reason for that one: people sometimes tested for Windows 95/98 by seeing if the version started with a 9, and they didn't want to clash with that. So this weirdness is simply an unintended side effect of their inconsistency in naming/versioning scheme.
- adrianmsmith 6y agoI've heard that too, but can that be true? Wouldn't a lot of stuff have stopped working on Windows ME (the next edition after Windows 98) if that were the case?
- jkaplowitz 6y agoNo, this wasn't for Windows executables working or not working in a core binary technical compatibility sense. This was for where either an app or a website needed to test the version number against several possible versions of Windows to determine which version of Windows they were running on and react (or reject) according to the programming. For later versions of Windows, programmers applied other tests, but none of those tests stepped on the "does it start with 9" test for 95/98. Using 9 for the version after 8.1 would have done so.