Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT: 2425-2429 (15-19 April, 2013) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread
Sidhekin:
Gets me thinking ...
There were for a while two different series of Windows. The four(?) NT versions and the 2000 started a new fully 32-bit series, "building" on OS/2 and VMS , parallelling the old hybrid 16-bit/32-bit series, based on MS-DOS.
The old series was dropped (except marketingwise, I guess) after ME (Millennium Edition nicely parallels 2000). The later XP, Vista, 7, and 8 are of the new series.
I guess that makes the seven versions 3.1NT, 3.5NT/3.51NT, 4.0NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7. (Counting 3.5NT/3.51NT as one, marketingwise?)
After which it would be simple, marketingwise, to retrofit the "7th" to the old series as well, probably counting XP, Vista, and 7 as belonging to that one as well, since the "Home" versions of these were marketed as such a continuation ...
ETA: Oh, and here's a nice table of NT versions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Releases
YourMaster:
The question isn't "why is it 7 when it's really 6.1", it's "why does GetVersionEx() say it's Windows version 6.1 when it's called Windows 7". The 6.1 number is checked by software, both good and bad software, to decide what the host operating system is capable of. And when they moved from 5.1 to 6, they got a bunch of unnecessary compatibility breaks that they didn't get when the previously moved from 5.0 to 5.1, so they decided not to move the major version up by 1. Windows 8 returns 6.2. I psychically predict the next version will be 6.3.
Why is the minor version number less of a problem than the major one? That just happened to be something poorly-written applications tended to ignore anyway. I guarantee there's at least one poorly written application that will balk at even the minor version number change. There might even be ones that are find with the major version number but not the minor one. If they hit critical mass at Windows 13 (say), then they might just jump the major number straight from 6 to 13.
None of those numbers indicate anything "real". One is just a name made up to explain the product to people. Another is a made-up number (technically, a vector, not a decimal number) which is a name to explain the product to software. Their purpose isn't really counting, it's distinguishing.
This isn't substantially different from how Mac OSX has been the tenth Mac OS for 12 years now, yet we're up to the 9th Operating System called OSX, which naturally has version number 10.8 (because the first was 10.0 and the second was 10.1 etc.). Or the iPhone mess, where the 2nd one was called 3G, the third was called 3Gs, then they got it right again with 4, then they ruined it by naming the 5th one 4s, and the sixth one is obviously called 5.
Anyway, as far as version numbers go, the Windows 9x series (including Me) was all Windows 4.something (eg. Me was 4.90, which is not 4.9 but is 81 minor versions higher than that); Windows 2000 and XP were Windows 5.0 and 5.1; Vista was Windows 6.0. Before Windows 95, Windows was marketed by version number directly (eg. Windows 3.1).
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: YourMaster on 21 Apr 2013, 00:40 ---Before Windows 95, Windows was marketed by version number directly (eg. Windows 3.1).
--- End quote ---
You forgot the Windows vs Windows for Workgroups split. And Windows 3.11 hasn't been mentioned either.
And there was the GUI that didn't make it... (Bob)
Pilchard123:
Comic Sans made it though.
Is it cold in here?:
Perhaps Microsoft has realized that the only way to get the stock price rising again is to sacrifice a version.
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