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For those of you who love Windows as much as I do (I’m just a tech advocate, so I love pretty much all technology), you’re probably interested in hearing where Microsoft is going with the new version of Windows. I’m running Windows 8.1 right now, and in general, computer software versioning follows a fairly rigid convention. When you launch a version with a lot of major new features, you move to the next whole number (so the next version after 8.1 is logically 9). Most companies give their software code names, so between Windows 3.0 and Windows 7, they used names like Windows 95, 98, XP, ME, Vista, etc., but those versions also had official numbers internally between 3 and 7. This jump to Windows 10 (instead of 9) seems very arbitrary, and if you watch the video, they try to explain it, but to me it sounds like an arbitrary decision.

One of the things that Apple has almost always been good at during product launches is making sure that they deliberately tell a story that makes sense within the context of the company, especially when it comes to naming their products. If there isn’t a linear succession of naming, there is a reason for it. So when this newest version of Windows was called Windows 10, I started thinking why that might be.

This spring, at the Microsoft Build conference, Microsoft debuted some features that would be making it into the next version of Windows, including some updates to changes made between Windows 7 and 8 that many users found jarring. These changes were mostly seen as the company backpedalling on their Windows 8 vision with the tiled Start menu and touch-friendly controls. It was said that these updates would be coming in the fall, and most people sneered or derided the company for regressing in the look and feel of Windows.

The new Windows 10 that was first unveiled yesterday is an early look at software that will be released to the public sometime in 2015. It would seem to me that internally, Windows 9 was deemed to not contain enough meaningful forward progress from Windows 8. From what I’ve seen, it mostly contained changes to placate enterprise users, as well as those who are still intent on running Windows XP in favour of learning the way a slightly different looking operating system might function. I’m not saying Windows 8 was perfect, but it certainly didn’t function THAT differently from Windows 7, and there were marked improvements made to the platform.

So my thought is that Windows version 9 was named and tested extensively internally, but just wasn’t ever released to the public. The company wanted to really make sure they were making upgrades to the system that were simultaneously worthwhile to enterprise customers upgrading from XP or Windows 7 (let’s be honest, no enterprise updated to Windows Vista), while still appealing to Windows 8 customers who are familiar with the Metro interface. I think they have done that in Windows 10.