This is so true. We can see it with their Xbox game consoles as well: Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X. I’m genuinely curious to see what comes next. Windows also was not very consistent in their naming: 3.11 (version numbering), 95 (suddenly year based), 98, 2000, Me (suddenly abbreviations or words based), XP, Vista, 7 (suddenly number based), 8, 10 (suddenly leaving out number 9), 11, 12. What a roller coaster.
And that’s only speaking about two line of products…
Actually, you’re speaking about three product lines: Xboxes, regular old Windows, and Windows NT. Hence also the weird contortions with Windows Me (“Millennium Edition”): They couldn’t name it Windows 2000, because that version had been released half a year earlier. They couldn’t really name it Windows 2001 either, because that would have implied it being better than (or even related to) Windows 2000.
They could’ve sold Windows 2000 as Windows NT 5 and Windows Me as Windows 2000; that would’ve kept the “NT X” versioning scheme for the professional line and the year-based scheme for the consumer line.
But the versioning scheme for the NT line is all kinds of weird in general. Windows 7 is NT 6.1. Windows 8 is NT 6.2. So we’ve established that the product name is independent of the version now. That means that Windows 10 is NT… 10.0. Windows 11 is also NT 10.0.
That means that Windows 10 is NT… 10.0. Windows 11 is also NT 10.0.
And likely windows 12 as well…
And versions of windows 10/11 have the same issue too…
v1507, because it was released in July 2015
v1511, Nov 2015
v1607, Aug 2016
v1703, April 2017
v1709, Sep 2017… wait… oh no that’s Oct (17th) 2017 (actual, but close enough)
v1803, April 2018
v1809, Sep 2018… god damnit, I mean Nov 2018 (actual, 2 months later?)
v1903, May 2019
v1909 Nov 2019
v2004, May 2020
v20H2, Hoctober 2020
v21H1, Hmay 2021
v21H2, Hnovember 2021
v22H2, Hoctober 2022…
Windows 11 isn’t any better
21H2
22H2
23H2
24H2
It’s just a mess… it was “good” for a while then turned to straight shit… Where the fuck is 22H1? I consider 2004 supposed to be 20H1…Why even bother with the H2 for Windows 11 at all? There’s never an H1… They don’t correspond to build numbers or anything like that at this point anyway. I think it’s supposed to correspond to halfyears? What happens when they have to push a second version in the second half of the year? Do we get 24H2v2?
I hate companies that fucking change their versioning more than once per product.
H is for half year. So, H1 = first half of the year.
Also, I never knew the four-digit build numbers were related to months. I always thought they were just creating builds and seeing which ones stick. Those that didn’t wouldn’t be shipped.
They could’ve sold Windows 2000 as Windows NT 5 and Windows Me as Windows 2000; that would’ve kept the “NT X” versioning scheme for the professional line and the year-based scheme for the consumer line.
That’s true of course. But iirc, Microsoft itself was on the fence of whether to release Me at all or whether to go straight to what would become XP, the release that united both lines of Windows. I guess that might explain somewhat why the NT product people felt it ok to steal the year-based versioning scheme of DOS-based Windows…?
True, although that made people think that Windows 2000 was the intended successor to Windows 98 – me included. Not that I minded; in my opinion Windows 2000 was straight up better than Windows XP until XP SP2 came out. Anyway, Microsoft spends far too much time getting cute with version numbers.
At least with jumping from Windows 8 to Windows 10 there was a realistic reason for it. I don’t remember the specifics but it was to reduce the risk of breaking third-party software coded with some janky way of determining Windows versions.
The rest of the naming jumps, I’m sure, were just the whims of whoever was in charge of the project at that time.
It mostly comes down to marketing reasons I assume. Me was marketed as in “Me”, the computer for personal usage. The second Xbox could not be named Xbox 2, because as we all know the 2 is less than the 3 in Playstation 3, and bigger number is better number, so it was named 360.
I don’t remember the specifics but it was to reduce the risk of breaking third-party software coded with some janky way of determining Windows versions.
Probably lazy detection for windows 95/98… The 9 might get parsed for those much older OSes…I know many apps were compatible with both 95, and 98… So they might just do a lazy check that 9 exists and call that “compatible”. When a windows 10 named 9 might not necessarily be.
However, knowing how much old shit is still compatible in Windows, I’m not sure this would have been that much of an issue.
This is so true. We can see it with their Xbox game consoles as well: Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X. I’m genuinely curious to see what comes next. Windows also was not very consistent in their naming: 3.11 (version numbering), 95 (suddenly year based), 98, 2000, Me (suddenly abbreviations or words based), XP, Vista, 7 (suddenly number based), 8, 10 (suddenly leaving out number 9), 11, 12. What a roller coaster.
And that’s only speaking about two line of products…
Actually, you’re speaking about three product lines: Xboxes, regular old Windows, and Windows NT. Hence also the weird contortions with Windows Me (“Millennium Edition”): They couldn’t name it Windows 2000, because that version had been released half a year earlier. They couldn’t really name it Windows 2001 either, because that would have implied it being better than (or even related to) Windows 2000.
They could’ve sold Windows 2000 as Windows NT 5 and Windows Me as Windows 2000; that would’ve kept the “NT X” versioning scheme for the professional line and the year-based scheme for the consumer line.
But the versioning scheme for the NT line is all kinds of weird in general. Windows 7 is NT 6.1. Windows 8 is NT 6.2. So we’ve established that the product name is independent of the version now. That means that Windows 10 is NT… 10.0. Windows 11 is also NT 10.0.
Okay.
And likely windows 12 as well…
And versions of windows 10/11 have the same issue too… v1507, because it was released in July 2015
v1511, Nov 2015
v1607, Aug 2016
v1703, April 2017
v1709, Sep 2017… wait… oh no that’s Oct (17th) 2017 (actual, but close enough)
v1803, April 2018
v1809, Sep 2018… god damnit, I mean Nov 2018 (actual, 2 months later?)
v1903, May 2019
v1909 Nov 2019
v2004, May 2020
v20H2, Hoctober 2020
v21H1, Hmay 2021
v21H2, Hnovember 2021
v22H2, Hoctober 2022…
Windows 11 isn’t any better
21H2
22H2
23H2
24H2
It’s just a mess… it was “good” for a while then turned to straight shit… Where the fuck is 22H1? I consider 2004 supposed to be 20H1…Why even bother with the H2 for Windows 11 at all? There’s never an H1… They don’t correspond to build numbers or anything like that at this point anyway. I think it’s supposed to correspond to halfyears? What happens when they have to push a second version in the second half of the year? Do we get 24H2v2?
I hate companies that fucking change their versioning more than once per product.
H is for half year. So, H1 = first half of the year.
Also, I never knew the four-digit build numbers were related to months. I always thought they were just creating builds and seeing which ones stick. Those that didn’t wouldn’t be shipped.
That’s true of course. But iirc, Microsoft itself was on the fence of whether to release Me at all or whether to go straight to what would become XP, the release that united both lines of Windows. I guess that might explain somewhat why the NT product people felt it ok to steal the year-based versioning scheme of DOS-based Windows…?
True, although that made people think that Windows 2000 was the intended successor to Windows 98 – me included. Not that I minded; in my opinion Windows 2000 was straight up better than Windows XP until XP SP2 came out. Anyway, Microsoft spends far too much time getting cute with version numbers.
At least with jumping from Windows 8 to Windows 10 there was a realistic reason for it. I don’t remember the specifics but it was to reduce the risk of breaking third-party software coded with some janky way of determining Windows versions.
The rest of the naming jumps, I’m sure, were just the whims of whoever was in charge of the project at that time.
It mostly comes down to marketing reasons I assume. Me was marketed as in “Me”, the computer for personal usage. The second Xbox could not be named Xbox 2, because as we all know the 2 is less than the 3 in Playstation 3, and bigger number is better number, so it was named 360.
Probably lazy detection for windows 95/98… The 9 might get parsed for those much older OSes…I know many apps were compatible with both 95, and 98… So they might just do a lazy check that 9 exists and call that “compatible”. When a windows 10 named 9 might not necessarily be.
However, knowing how much old shit is still compatible in Windows, I’m not sure this would have been that much of an issue.
That’s more or less what I remember of their rationale as well. Apparently it was common enough that they legit considered it a potential problem.