Well, I'd say ME is at least related to the pattern. IIRC, it wasn't supposed to exist at all. You could describe it as a "failure-to-tick": Microsoft wasn't re

Well, I'd say ME is at least related to the pattern. IIRC, it wasn't supposed to exist at all. You could describe it as a "failure-to-tick": Microsoft wasn't ready to switch to the Windows NT codebase for a consumer version of Windows, so we got Windows ME (note that XP came out about a year later). That being said, I agree that the pattern doesn't go back beyond ME. Which does make me wonder: what changed?