The average buyer isn't confused by which version to use. They use the one that comes with their computer, or if they really want to upgrade on the same computer, the one that is on the shelf at Best Buy.
My guess is that they skipped 9 to demonstrate just how much better than Windows 8 this release will (they hope) be. And I must say, as a bit of marketing I think it's not bad -- it (and the release of 8.1) really makes you feel like they take the criticisms of Windows 8 very seriously. It remains to be seen, of course, whether they can put that into practice.
My guess is that they skipped 9 to demonstrate just how much better than Windows 8 this release will (they hope) be. And I must say, as a bit of marketing I think it's not bad
Like Slackware Linux, which went straight from 4.0 to 7.0 ;).
Putting the same Windows on all devices is a pretty amazing achievement. From a marketing point of view, it seems logical to stamp it with a milestone version number too. Particularly one with a little distance from 8...
I doubt its the going to be the "same" Windows on all devices considering all the different device architectures involved. At best they'll all feel the same which is great but would probably be just as much of a hassle from a developer point-of-view.
the WinRT architecture is using .net (more or less) so developing for different type basically only requires different inputs and displays. everything else is more or less exactly the same
Rumors on the internet[1] suggest that Microsoft is moving to a more incremental update cadence, and, correspondingly, there will never be another major version release of Windows. If that's the case, I'd wager they didn't want to be stuck "a version behind" Mac OS X forever.
Really, what they need to go is get some inspired sequel names from the guys at Capcom or ArcSys Works. I'm not sure about Windows 10, but I'd upgrade to Windows 9 Super Turbo HD Remix or Windows Chrono Phantasma in a heartbeat.
Maybe they are just trying to convince all the "what I have is good enough" people that they are getting behind? Microsoft does have a huge legacy problem. XP has the second largest market share.
I kind of like it. It makes sense for something like Weather, which is information you want at-a-glance but you don't want to see all the time like on the start screen. On previous versions of Windows, there'd be links to My Documents and Control Panel and such, but I'd rather use search to find that stuff.
"Maybe if we skip a version number, they'll think it's an even newer and better version..."
No but my guess is that 8 bombed so hard that they didn't want to sell it as 9 since that would make it specifically a successor to 8 (which it is, but we wouldn't want the consumers to know). Same way we got 7 instead of Vista 2 or whatever. They want 10 to seem like a new hip thing instead of a desperate attempt to fix their mess.
Although Belfiore stresses that this preview only shows a glimpse of the changes in Win10, it's striking that it only shows that Microsoft is making it more like "classic" Windows again. To be honest, apps run now in normal windows - this is such a no-brainer, it should have been there from the start.
There was never really any consistent list of Windows versions you could come up with that would lead to "Windows 7" actually being the 7th version. So it's not like the numbers mean much anyway. Why not 10? [1]
[1] Maybe they should have gone for 11, since it's one more.
They're not taking any chances. From Wikipedia: "The Japanese consider nine to be unlucky because in Japanese the word for nine sounds similar to the word for "pain" or "distress"
"We believe that, together with the feedback you provide us, we can build a product that all of our customers will love," Myerson said. "It will be our most open collaborate OS projects ever."
followed by
Q: When it comes to your enterprise customers about Windows 10. How big has the push back been to get Windows away from Live Tiles, back to Windows 7 stuff?
A: We don't hear pushback that we don't like Live Tiles. We hear pushback about too much training.
So basically "together with your feedback" means "we'll ignore your feedback if it conflicts with a design decision we've already made"
Not sure why you would draw that conclusion. Do you really think people have a problem with the live tiles themselves? That's like saying users are opposed to "icons". Live Tiles are simply icons on steroids.
The Q&A sounded to me like he's saying there's nothing wrong with the Live Tiles, but the UI was simply not lernable especially the dichotomy between tablet/desktop mode. They want to fix the latter problem, but don't see a need to ditch live tiles.
My impression has always been that people misuse the term live tiles to mean the general interface. While I've heard people complain about about the "live tile interface", I don't think I've actually heard a complaint about live tiles vs static icons.
As a misnomer, while the speaker answered talking about live tiles themselves. At least that's my interpretation, per my initial reply.
How I read it:
"Q: How are you responding to push back regarding live tiles?
A: We actually didn't see push back from live tiles, but learnability. We are addressing the latter."
One popular theory is that there is software out there that checks for Windows version == 6 instead of >= 6 when deciding to enable features for Vista and above. This was definitely true of libcurl at one point, for example.
Is 8 have that bad of a reputation. I bought a laptop last year and once I figured out how to get it to start on desktop mode I've been happily using 8 like I was 7. Barely spend anytime in the Start screen. What else is there that people don't like about 8?
People who are still on Win7 mostly associate it with the death of the start menu. What's more, for desktop users it barely has any huge improvements over 7. At least that's my impression.
What is wrong with Mac OS11? Apple keeps going with OSX because it's so marketable. What is wrong with Linux kernel 2.6? Linus bumped the version number purely for marketing (after saying he would not bump the version number).
