4 ms·

That's probably part of the reason why 9 was skipped - Microsoft didn't want a lower "forever version" number lower than Apple.

swashboon 11y ago
The anecdotal reason (from reddit[1]) was that it would have broken to much third party code doing checks for Windows 95/98. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2hwlrk/new_windows_version_will_be_called_windows_10/ckwq83x https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2hwlrk/new_wind...
- TillE 11y ago
  This keeps getting mentioned in various places, but it's nonsense. We're talking about a tiny number of obscure Java programs which do the insane thing of checking OS version by string rather than with numbers. For the five people on Earth actually affected by this, there's always compatibility mode.
  - bsilvereagle 11y ago
    When this first started to be mentioned, I saw multiple people claiming drivers checking for 95/98 was the driving factor. There are a lot of obscure drivers still in production and I don't know of a 'compatibility mode' for drivers.
Zikes 11y ago
They probably also thought ahead a bit on how it would wind up getting abbreviated, used, or misused by the public. I recall when the XBox One came out and everybody called it the XBone, several folks on the XBox One team were upset about it. If there's a Windows 9 it might eventually turn into Roman numerals, so then you've got Windows IX, which could turn into Winix or Wix, or in a particularly bad case "Windows Icks".
nkozyra 11y ago
Then why not Windows 11? These guys are just not ambitious enough. I imagine it did play some role but as a child comment notes, the regex checks for Windows 9\d* in order to capture both 95 and 98 in a few languages that exposed versions like that probably played a much larger role. Accommodations that were made for those incredibly old systems could very easily have caused some big problems if they matched on Windows 9.
- bonif 11y ago
  They already had Windows 2000 ...
- bcohen5055 11y ago
  Ya, "Our OS goes to 11, you see... a typical OS can only go to 10. Our OS rocks that much harder"

swashboon 11y ago

The anecdotal reason (from reddit[1]) was that it would have broken to much third party code doing checks for Windows 95/98. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2hwlrk/new_windows_version_will_be_called_windows_10/ckwq83x https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2hwlrk/new_wind...

TillE 11y ago
This keeps getting mentioned in various places, but it's nonsense. We're talking about a tiny number of obscure Java programs which do the insane thing of checking OS version by string rather than with numbers. For the five people on Earth actually affected by this, there's always compatibility mode.
- bsilvereagle 11y ago
  When this first started to be mentioned, I saw multiple people claiming drivers checking for 95/98 was the driving factor. There are a lot of obscure drivers still in production and I don't know of a 'compatibility mode' for drivers.

Zikes 11y ago

They probably also thought ahead a bit on how it would wind up getting abbreviated, used, or misused by the public. I recall when the XBox One came out and everybody called it the XBone, several folks on the XBox One team were upset about it. If there's a Windows 9 it might eventually turn into Roman numerals, so then you've got Windows IX, which could turn into Winix or Wix, or in a particularly bad case "Windows Icks".

nkozyra 11y ago

Then why not Windows 11? These guys are just not ambitious enough. I imagine it did play some role but as a child comment notes, the regex checks for Windows 9\d* in order to capture both 95 and 98 in a few languages that exposed versions like that probably played a much larger role. Accommodations that were made for those incredibly old systems could very easily have caused some big problems if they matched on Windows 9.

bonif 11y ago
They already had Windows 2000 ...
bcohen5055 11y ago
Ya, "Our OS goes to 11, you see... a typical OS can only go to 10. Our OS rocks that much harder"