Windows 95 The Reason Why Microsoft Skipped Windows 9
Redmond took everyone by surprise a couple of days back by announcing that its next operating system will be called Windows 10 — instead of names like Windows, Windows 9 and Windows Threshold that were being thrown around.
While we don’t have an official reason to go by, a Reddit user claiming to be a Microsoft developer has shed some light on this.
Speculation is that Microsoft decided to skip Windows 9 and go directly to Windows 10 because of Windows 95. And this because some third-party applications could incorrectly identify the version of Windows running on a computer.
And the reason for this?
The developer explains that a lot of software programs check for “Windows 9*” on a target computer, and it is this wildcard in the syntax that might cause the operating system to be identified as an old one.
Shades of the Y2K bug, don’t you think?
However, as Engaged writes, a similar issue arose some 10 years back with Windows 2000 and a few Pentium processors (remember those?), but that actually affected a lot fewer customers.
Still, wise of Microsoft to avoid any such potential errors in the future.
The software titan is very much entering a new phase, a new era, and the Windows brand is now going to be left, right and center of its new strategy. Best to play it safe, even it results in giving the operating system a wholly unexpected new name.
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