Windows 9 is now Windows 10

Post Reply
cwathen
Posts: 1309
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

Microsoft's penchant for naming Windows versions after irrelevant numbers continues (awaits fanboy to produce some faulty history/grouping of different versions/ignoring versions that did exist to attempt to show that the numbers make sense), at the 'Windows 9' launch press conference yesterday they announced that the new OS will be called 'Windows 10', as apparently calling it '9' 'wouldn't be right' in their new 'One Microsoft' strategy.

In all seriousness though, it does seem a good proposition - the idea is that they will have one unified OS running across all devices, from phone to tablet to PC to Xbox with cross-application support from one app store across all of them (although I would assume that this would apply only to 'app' type software and a few flagship products like Office, given the different architectures I doubt that the bulk of Windows software will run on anything other than the PC version).

They will also be unifying the 'modern' and 'classic' views - the end result is that essentially we will be back to the classic desktop with a taskbar and start menu but with support for modern apps merged on top of it thus appealing to every one.

The new start menu looks pretty good too, with enough traditional start menu functionality on it for those who want it combined with the ability to stick tiles on for those who preferred the start screen.

The version demonstrated is described as an 'early build' but given they are still going for a mid-2015 launch I can't see how it fundamentally changing much before then.

It will be interesting to see whether or not there will be a 32 bit build available for older hardware or for people which still need 16 bit application/DOS support (for such people do still exist) - given that the codebase still seems to be NT6, it wouldn't surprise me if they still produce one in an attempt to get people on older systems off of XP, which reportedly is still powering almost a quarter of PC's - more than Windows 8.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2689393/ ... and-8.html
User avatar
WillPS
Posts: 2456
Joined: Tue 22 Apr, 2008 18.32
Location: Carlton
Contact:

Microsoft are not alone in skipping OS version numbers - skipping to 10 as if it has some kind of significance is a bit of an annoying trend triggered by MacOSX. BlackBerry did the exact same thing and I'm sure there are others.

I would be very surprised to see the 32 bit platform ended at Windows 8 - they've implied it'll be available on every platform except phones (which are a totally different kettle of fish despite their weird attempts to harmonise them). Microsoft are now massively against it to prevent another XP situation occurring with Windows 7 - some would argue they already have. They need Windows 10 to be available everywhere, quickly. Given the Vista-derived kernel is staying they should be able to streamline the upgrade process to appease sysadmins - having an analogue to every edition of Windows 7 is surely a must.

I would hope/expect that Windows 8 will be tossed upgrade options for nothing/next to nothing to assist in bringing the 10 platform to ubiquity.
Image
barcode
Posts: 1495
Joined: Wed 29 Aug, 2007 19.36

Its also been claimed it will be FREE to all windows 8 users...
woah
Posts: 365
Joined: Sun 28 Mar, 2010 12.39

The technical preview is now available for download (and there's a 32-bit version in answer to the previous question!)
cwathen
Posts: 1309
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

So I planned to try running it in Virtual PC before maybe going for a dual boot in a separate partition.

Hopefully I took a wrong turning, but the experience I just had with trying to download it was a bit terrifying...I ended up on a screen where I was told the next option was to 'get the upgrade' with no other obvious path forward. Click on that proposed downloading a 4MB file which I did thinking it was some kind of download manager.

Next my computer wanted me to restart at which point I got a bit scared and terminated the process, but on doing a manual restart to test if I had stopped whatever it had started it downloaded a windows update which then reran windows update on start and if it weren't for me disabling automatic updates it would have then downloaded a 2GB file and updated my live working Window 7 install with no further warning! I've now hidden the update and hope it doesn't come back again.

What happened to just downloading an ISO file??!!
woah
Posts: 365
Joined: Sun 28 Mar, 2010 12.39

I'm not sure where you are looking, but I have an ISO file and so far it's looking good! I went here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/preview
Philip
Posts: 1133
Joined: Fri 22 Feb, 2008 21.23
Location: Merseyside
Contact:

I just downloaded the ISO file linked to by The Verge, installed it in VMware Fusion.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/1/68771 ... w-download
Image
User avatar
AJ
Posts: 94
Joined: Mon 16 Feb, 2004 15.25
Location: London

According to a Microsoft developer on Reddit, the reason for the jump from 8 to 10 is this:
Image

I've not seen the thread on Reddit myself - I got this image from here.
User avatar
Nick Harvey
God
Posts: 4145
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 22.26
Location: Deepest Wiltshire
Contact:

I must confess that, having done a bit of coding over the years, that's exactly the reason for going from 8 to 10 that I thought of when I first saw the news.
cwathen
Posts: 1309
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

AJ wrote:According to a Microsoft developer on Reddit, the reason for the jump from 8 to 10 is this:
Image

I've not seen the thread on Reddit myself - I got this image from here.
Sounds good at first look, but doesn't stand up to closer examination. For a start, all Windows 9x releases reported version numbers in the 4.x series, and that '95 and 98' code string completely ignores Windows ME. Granted, it's probably better off ignored, but it was a Windows 9x style operating system and would have run the same code so the version trapping demonstrated is fundamentally broken there as ME would be sent off to 'else' because it didn't have a 9 in it's name.

Windows NT4 also had a version number in the 4.x series even though it was a completely different operating system with a different code base and huge compatibility differences with Windows 9x, yet I don't recall any software having problems distinguishing between the two.

More recently, the idea of a Windows '7', '8' and '8.1' is just marketing - internally they are all part of Windows NT 6.x. Windows 10 will be another version 6.x release - and it would had ended up with the same version 6.x number if it was called Windows 9.

The idea that software running on 'Windows 9' would think it was running on Windows 95/98 and crash & burn as a result has less legs to it than the millennium bug did.
User avatar
dosxuk
Posts: 673
Joined: Thu 07 Feb, 2008 21.37
Location: Sheffield

cwathen wrote:More recently, the idea of a Windows '7', '8' and '8.1' is just marketing - internally they are all part of Windows NT 6.x. Windows 10 will be another version 6.x release - and it would had ended up with the same version 6.x number if it was called Windows 9.
The main Windows build number is going to stay as 6 for a very long time, even though the kernel has had major changes since it started being used. There's no internal need for the major version number to change, and it does break apps when they change the numbers, so they decided to just keep using 6, while telling everybody (again) to detect features by detecting features, not just looking at a version number.

App developers are lazy. A large number of websites broke when internet explorer 10 came out, because they were detecting features based on the first digit after "explorer", and then deciding that 1 was less than 4 (or 5, or 6, or whatever they were looking for).

Anyway, I think the German for 9 is more of a reason to avoid the name, people have already been making jokes about "Windows Nein".
Post Reply