Windows 9 is Windows 10

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes.

Microsoft has a long history of naming things strangely, and they’re showing no signs of stopping. Despite it being a) logical; and b) already announced, “Windows 9” will not be the name of the next version of Windows. No, it will be “Windows 10”, because 10 is better than 9.

That aside, Windows 9 10 is apparently going to be a lot like Windows 7, at least according to some early prototype reviewers.

On a positive note, it looks like Microsoft is finally starting to realize that they can make users really happy by fixing things that should have worked properly in Windows 95. A good example of this is the file copy/move dialog in Windows 8.x, which is vastly better than in any previous version of Windows. And now the creaky old command window is finally going to be improved in Windows 10.

Update 2014Oct02: According to some sources, the reason ’10’ was chosen over ‘9’ is that a lot of software currently includes code that determines whether a computer is running Windows 95 and 98 by looking at the Windows version and comparing it to “Windows 9”. However, while such code does exist, this is not the recommended method for determining Windows version. If Microsoft is going to make decisions like this based on sloppy, ancient coding practices, we’re in serious trouble.

About jrivett

Jeff Rivett has worked with and written about computers since the early 1980s. His first computer was an Apple II+, built by his father and heavily customized. Jeff's writing appeared in Computist Magazine in the 1980s, and he created and sold a game utility (Ultimaker 2, reviewed in the December 1983 Washington Apple Pi Journal) to international markets during the same period. Proceeds from writing, software sales, and contract programming gigs paid his way through university, earning him a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) degree at UWO. Jeff went on to work as a programmer, sysadmin, and manager in various industries. There's more on the About page, and on the Jeff Rivett Consulting site.

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