Windows has been weird since long before the event the OP mentions though.
Normal up until 3.1, then:
95
98
2000
ME
XP
Vista
7 (internally, actually 6.1)
8 (internally, actually 6.2)
8.1 (internally, actually 6.3 and therefore as significant as 7 -> 8)
Also, the hilarious alleged reason they did it. Not (just) because of the marketing boost associated with version 10, but because they specifically wanted to avoid the number 9 out of backwards compatibility concerns. Some old code would actually detect it’s running on “either 95 or 98” by doing a string comparison of the version number returned by the OS, and seeing if it started with ‘9’.
Rather than risk maybe causing some compatibility problems with an edge case in software from the early '00s, they figured “just skip it entirely”.
Ha, urgh… the string checking thing is amusing. That’s not even counting that ME was the last DOS based one, and there was NT 3.1, 3.5, and 4, then 2000 was NT 5.0… and XP and everything after that. Then internally XP was NT 5.1, 5.2, and Vista was NT 6. Windows 7? NT 6.1. Windows 8: NT 6.2. Then Windows 10? NT 10,0. Now the latest Windows 11 is uh, 23H2.
I haven’t used windows in ages, but I do remember compatibility mode, and you could select the OS a program should be compatible with. Why couldn’t they have had Windows 9, and for apps with issues, you could run in compatibility mode for XP?
Windows has been weird since long before the event the OP mentions though.
Normal up until 3.1, then:
Also, the hilarious alleged reason they did it. Not (just) because of the marketing boost associated with version 10, but because they specifically wanted to avoid the number 9 out of backwards compatibility concerns. Some old code would actually detect it’s running on “either 95 or 98” by doing a string comparison of the version number returned by the OS, and seeing if it started with ‘9’.
Rather than risk maybe causing some compatibility problems with an edge case in software from the early '00s, they figured “just skip it entirely”.
Ha, urgh… the string checking thing is amusing. That’s not even counting that ME was the last DOS based one, and there was NT 3.1, 3.5, and 4, then 2000 was NT 5.0… and XP and everything after that. Then internally XP was NT 5.1, 5.2, and Vista was NT 6. Windows 7? NT 6.1. Windows 8: NT 6.2. Then Windows 10? NT 10,0. Now the latest Windows 11 is uh, 23H2.
those 23H2 feature updates look like (biological) viruses to me
Version numbers actually existed (Windows 95 was 4.0) but nobody used them
I haven’t used windows in ages, but I do remember compatibility mode, and you could select the OS a program should be compatible with. Why couldn’t they have had Windows 9, and for apps with issues, you could run in compatibility mode for XP?