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Why Are Operating System Version Names So Absurd?
jfruh writes "Apple's spent more than a decade on version 10 — or, rather, X — of its flagship operating system, with .x versions named after big cats (and many of them, it turns out, after the same big cats). Ubuntu Linux is scrambling to find ever more obscure animals to alliteratively name its versions after. And let's not even talk about Windows, whose current shipping OS is sold as Windows 7 but is really Windows NT 6.1. Why is this area of software marketing so ridiculous?"
My friend Peter is not a rock, and my friend Thomas isn't even a twin.
Apple never would've been able to convince the Mac faithful to purchase OPENSTEP 5.0, &c.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
You cannot trademark numbers.
Also, for most non-techies, it is easier to remember "Tiger" than "10.4"
but Firefox 4 is also called Firefox 12
Can you believe that Fifa 98 was really made in 1997?! WOOOHOO!
And Solaris 2.x is SunOS 5.x. There's the software version and then there's the marketing name. If you haven't noticed, Windows NT went 3.1, 3.5, 4.0, 2000, XP/2003, 7/2008, 2012, 8.
It's not really any more ridiculous than any other marketing effort.
Windows, whose current shipping OS is sold as Windows 7 but is really Windows NT 6.1
This is a distinction between a brand name and a kernel version number. Why is this more absurd compared to "Precise Pangolin" for instance?
Regardless, I think you'll find names of almost any product in a sufficiently crowded marketplace become absurd as they try to differentiate themselves and also avoid stepping on any trademarked names. You see this with domain names in particular.
Personally, I'm waiting for Verizon to introduce the Droid Razr Super Maxxx HD LTE 2.
I'm a dedicated Android fan, but I'm sick of the overload of different models and ridiculous names. Some variety is great, but please....
One thing I like about the Galaxy line is that, though there are endless spin-offs, they are essentially delineated into generations I, II, III, etc.
Naming a product to sell it in a commercial market has got nothing to do with internal release milestones, and you don't have to be a marketing expert to realize that 'Windows 11' doesn't sound especially cool, whereas 'X' or 'Wild Giraffe' both sound awesome.
The question is more ridiculous than the discrepancy.
NO
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Could we have a tag: 'newsworthy' - something to identify a story as being worth paying ANY attention to?
It helps when you're googling to know which software version you're in. Sometimes it's easier to Google for "Ubuntu Boring Beaver" than "Ubuntu 11.04" or whatever. Likewise with Windows, noone ever calls it Windows NT so noone would bother searching for Windows NT 6.1 issues.
It's all in the marketing, as many have stated.
Check out Unsealed: Whispers of Wisdom! http://unsealed.k3rnel.net It's an action-RPG about Open Sourcerers.
Operating Systems are fundamentally boring. Once you get past the fanboi-ism, they are just software that sits there on your computer. They are there to *facilitate* your work, but they don't produce anything in and of themselves.
So you have to jazz them up as much as you can, so people will take notice.
i don't see anything wrong with releasing a product (os x), then releasing incremental upgrades that add or fix things, yet still calling it os x with a fancy subtitle. that's how these things _work_. as for jumping from os 8 to os x and vista to 7, well who cares? every industry does stuff like this. at least with computers you get version numbers (sometimes!). cuisinart's line of blenders is much harder to remember.
i suppose MsDOS 6.22, windows 3.11, system V and AmigaOS 3.1 were much more meaningfull, right? jeez, TFA is a waste of time
...because convincing people to pay $200 to upgrade from Windows NT 6.0 to Windows NT 6.1 is not as easy as telling them it's a whole new version of Windows.
Also, Apple uses the big cat theme for the same reason. Tell somebody you want $30 to upgrade them from 10.7 to 10.8 and you wouldn't have much success. On the flip side, there's not enough of a difference between each version of Mac OS X to warrant each getting its own major number. They're all based on the same underlying kernel and subsystems but have new features and UI improvements as the big selling point.
DUH!!!!!!! Version control numbers are completely beyond the need of the laymen when it comes to OS. All they care about is if its new or different from what they are running and thus why the OS has names like Win 8 or Mountain Lion. I almost never refer to Lion as Lion except to users. To me its 10.7.# Build ##### thats all I need thats all I care about.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Here's why:
Windows 95, 98, 7, 42, whatever: These are the product NAMES, not version numbers. Consumers don't give a shit about the version number being 6.1
Mac OSX: Lion, Leopard, Big Cat, whatever: These are the product NAMES, not version numbers. Consumers don't give a shit about the version number being 10.7.
Ubuntu Hardy Heron, Gutsy Gibbon, Anonymous Asshole, whatever: These are the product NAMES, not version numbers. Consumers don't give a shit about the version number being 12.04.
Why are we discussing something so pointless?
...with a simple answer. People like you.
My first impression back in 2000 was that X referred more to porting the MacOS experience to X-windows, the gui engine for UNIX, a well timed double meaning.
I thought the main reason for Windows 7 being Windows NT 6.1 was because that way they could avoid breaking driver compatibility since most of the drivers should still work between these very similar architectures. Windows NT 6.0 - Windows Vista/Server 2008 Windows NT 6.1 - Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 Windows NT 6.2 - Windows 8/Server 2012
...dear subby, marketing in itself is absurd.
--
BMO
Felidae - the OS X problem
Absurd? I don't know what you're talking about.
[posted from Quantal Quetzal 12.10b1]
...the might end up with something like:
OS
OS:The Animated Series
OS:The Next Generation
OS: Deep Space 9
OS: Voyager
OS: Enterprise
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
A better question would be "Why do you care?"
"My brand of comfort isn't so much 'There-there' as it is 'There's a boot, pardon me while I connect it with your ass!'"
Pick a name in alphabetical order. That way you have an idea if you have the latest version.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
"Why is this area of software marketing so ridiculous?" Because the names are created by people in marketing who don't care about software. Get ready for the resourceful rat version of Ubuntu 14.
I worked for a large cellular company for most of the 90s & remember when phones had model #s instead of names...
I had an NEC 301 which was relatively nice for 1992 but not as pimp as the Oki 900.
that was before the dark times, before the marketing... now we have the "galaxy", the "incredible", the "${insert_focus_group_buzzword_du_jour}"
now get off my lawn!
To say nothing of Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Ginger Bread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, and Key Lime Pie. All of which followed, by some bizarre naming snafu, Astro and Bender.
Not sure about why these things get such odd names for people to use ... but years ago when I still coded for a living, if we were working on something, we specifically gave it a codename which a) the marketing guys would never ever use, and b) which made it not so obvious what it was.
We used to find that if the sales guys caught whiff of something, or liked the working name, it would end up being used in customer presentations and generally cause problems as they started selling something that hadn't been released (or even coded) yet.
So project anchovy or project firkin tended to keep them away. This was done throughout development, and I believe was actually a policy.
As to why Ubuntu comes up with such odd names ... that I can't even speak to. Because "Zitty Zebra" or "Punk-Rock Platypus" never seem to make sense as official names to me.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Are car names and model designations any less stupid?
love is just extroverted narcissism
I say yawn because when I actually yawn...
Nerds don't give a shit, by the time the marketing monkeys take over from the coding monkeys any self respecting nerd monkey has moved on to the next code-named release.
When has the consumer branding of anything been stuff that matters...
shiyt, consumer monkeys barely have the use of opposable thumbs hense the need of tablet OS'
Why is this even a fucking question on slashdot? who fucking cares.
Revision numbers just don't market well....
Why do dogs lick their balls?
Who is the idiot that named Windows 8? I mean CMON, was that the BEST they could do after Windows 7?
Since this is Slashdot...
Why is this area of automotive marketing so ridiculous?
I'm working on a new Linux distro, I'm thinking about naming it "Big Turd Linux"... the first release will be 3.0, based on the 3.4 kernel, also known as the "Stinky Load" release.
After that I'm thinking "Runny Load", followed by the "Constipation" release.
I run debian/stable and debian/testing.
I think they were squeeze and wheezy, but I don't really care what the name is, why should I.
I know I've got the current most up to date in each tree, and that's all that really matters to me.
Yeah because I always choose an operating system based on the animal it pictures on the cover.
Stop this joke that "geeks" seek the ultimate l33t OS but the little clueless noobs select their OS by the cover.
Your mom, that's why. Ha ha.
Seriously. Linux distros that you don't pay licenses for tend to flaunt the fact that they are non-commercial, i.e., their name wasn't cooked up by a marketing team, and then focus-grouped to death.
The Windows example: commercial software.
Apple OSes: "we're hip, unique. Just like your are!"
Man, I'm going to have to end with, "Your mom." Ha ha. Not kidding. Thanks for the crappy non-news...
There are a variety of great reasons, not all of them equal, and the reasons do vary a bit from one operating system to another.
Most developers use codenames for projects, especially projects that haven't received an official name yet. In the case of Mac OS X for example, the codenames became public knowledge and that was how a lot of people began referring to the release. Apple realized that it made their operating system versions a bit more memorable and began unveiling each new release by way of each particular codename.
People find it hard to remember arbitrary numbers. We like to name things. Assigning memorable names helps people make a distinction between different iterations of a similar project. Also, these memorable names can be trademarked while a simple number cannot.
The main reason it is 6.1 and not 7 is a lot of programmers did the version check wrong where 7.0 is considered less than 6.1 because they checked the minor version incorrectly. That is a compatibility fix that is zero lines of code, but probably took a lot of effort to work. So even if they wanted to take out the bloated compatibility, it wouldn't do anything.
It is probably a trademark issue. The stranger the name (i.e., distinct) the easier it is to protect the name. If you named your operating system, Functional Operating System, you will have a harder time than if you had named your operating system, Big Slick.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names
Yeah, names. Like /.
http:///..com gotcha.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
"Why is this area of [software] [marketing] so ridiculous?"
You has it
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Only speaking for Linux here,
But googling for generic issues often throws up heaps of out-of-date or otherwise unhelpful hits
For a set of systems that move so fast (eg. 6 monthly release cycles for Ubuntu and Fedora), you need to get more taylored results
Including "Quantal", "Wheezy" or "Spherical" in your search terms is likely to pull up far more relevant results
6.1 is the kernel version, the full OS is Windows 7.
Its the same reason RedHat doesn't sell RedHat 2.3.125, but RedHat 6 or whatever.
I recall something along the lines of this in the context of the periodic table of the elements - why not just name the elements the number of protons? Hydrogen would be "1", etc.
I knew what year Windows 95 came out, and I knew Win 98 was 3 years afterwards. I know that "Prickly Penguin" is after "Jumping Jeroboa" (yes, I know those aren't real names), but I don't immediately know when each came out. And I don't have a clue which Debian toy was when.. At least with years, I know how old a given OS is.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Naming works when your only real goal is to spur people's imagination. It's effective because it draws on a primal desire to understand your surroundings (for survival).
It's so basic to your instinctual goals and desires that even geeks can't resist.
B-)
Far more egregious than OS names is the numbering convention for the Xbox and Firefox. Xbox went from 1 to 360, presumably because Microsoft's marketing department couldn't stand to be stuck at 2 when the Playstation was already on 3. I'd like how they're going to address that one when they get to the next gen model; they'll probably go with a name instead. Firefox is currently at 15 when every update since about 4 has been incremental. I doubt they'd even have gotten to 5 by now were they following proper version numbering conventions.
The numbering convention for Windows makes some sense. Apple does even better, at least in terms of consistency. From a visual and usability standpoint the OS hasn't fundamentally changed since 10.1. And the code names, regardless of semantics, are distinctive and consistent.
Who really cares what their operating system is named or numbered. You can piss and moan about it all day, but as long as you can tell the difference, I really don't care
Stay tuned for OSX Smoke Jaguar and OSX Nova Cat. OSX Liger?
+1 Obscure ELO reference.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
For example, Porsche911 has been around almost fifty years (since 1963).
I wonder if anyone in 1973 wrote an article on "Porsche '911' - A Nonsensical Naming Standard?"
Maybe people in 2052 will still be driving "OS X" or "Windows Server 2052".
Feature-wise, both OS makers & auto makes have arbitrary upgrade cycles. Industry observers for both often complain about minor do-nothing incremental changes, as well as sweeping wide reaching changes (vista, anyone?).
fwiw - I believe airplane manufacturers follow a similar naming convention (737, 747, Airbus, Cesna, ...).
Spaceship manufacturers are still fairly new, but I bet in 2052 that SpaceX will still be building Falcons.
but also many other large 'projects' that people give names to, eg:
* Chips - Intel has fun names
* Police operations
* Military operations
* Cars have names
We just seem to like naming things rather than giving them numbers - that is why one degrading act of imprisonment is to refer to the inmate by number
iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5. iPad, iPad 2, the New iPad. iBooks, iPod, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iWork, iAmgoingtogocrazyif iWriteanymoreofthese
Surprise, surprise. Infoworld filling their pages with tripe, and again, Slashdot reposting it.
This was the sentence that tipped me off: "Ubuntu Linux is scrambling to find ever more obscure animals to alliteratively name its versions after."
No one is scrambling. They obviously haven't seen the list, or the matrix.
While I can't blame Infoworld for trying to fill the pages with some content, any content at all, somehow I believe that Slashdot should be different. I don't know why.
It's about what sounds good at the time to the marketeers.
(Whenever I see the word "marketeers" I want to go "Emm eye cee (see you real soon) kay eee wye (why? because we like you)"...)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
-1 Off-topic obscure ELO reference.
'Man-Eating Seals of Antiquity' is not the wierdest.
Starting with the Pentium (because 586 was no longer trademarkable) Intel has gone off in the weeds. They had the pro, and every CPU after were just minor tweaks on that platform. They were called the Pentium 2, 3, 4 and 5. The "Core 2" is the only true successor.
Now you have something called a Core I7. Well, there aren't 7 cores. But we know there is at least one core. I don't know the clock speed (because clock speeds stopped growing) I don't know the cores. AMD at least had reasonable model numbers based on relative Intel performance X2 3400 was a dual core preforming like an Intel at 3400MHZ.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Apple will finally be able to use "Ours goes to 11!" as a marketing phrase.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
"If you wish to make an OS from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
the Pete Puma version?
They skip camera numbers for no good reason (although I suspect this has something to do with skipping the number 4).
Ubuntu versions oficial names are Year.Month the Adjective Animal are only codenames for development.
OS names are all about marketing. If it boosts sales or visibility or whatever dipshit metric is in vogue, it's successful! They stick with a particular naming convention to promote brand continuity. The cat names have worked out well for Apple, so I'm sure they don't think it's ridiculous. Although I think they've beaten the cat name thing to death, and will come up with a new scheme soon.
Your focus on this post smells of autism.
When they do, they'll turn it up to 11.
Or to the simple fact that ... whoosh! just happened.
And don't forget the sarcastic Linux kernel release names, my favorite one is "Sheep on Meth".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names
Because they let marketing & sales staff pick the names.
The current version of the Linux operating system (not the Ubuntu Linux distribution), currently at version number 3.6.0-rc4 is Saber-toothed Squirrel. Its easily found if you go to /usr/src/linux and type head Makefile | grep NAME it will tell you:
VERSION = 3
PATCHLEVEL = 6
SUBLEVEL = 0
EXTRAVERSION = -rc4
NAME = Saber-toothed Squirrel
# *DOCUMENTATION* ./README
# To see a list of typical targets execute "make help"
# More info can be located in
# Comments in this file are targeted only to the developer, do not
(so there!)
While it rarely shows up, Linux kernels have some hilarious names.
Names like "Funky Weasel is Jiggy wit it",
"Rotary Wombat",
"Trembling Tortoise",
"Killer Bat of Doom",
"Erotic Pickled Herring",
"Temporary Tasmanian Devil",
"Vindictive Armadillo",
"Man-Eating Seals of Antiquity",
"Sheep on Meth",
"Yokohama",
"Flesh-Eating Bats with Fangs",
"Sneaky Weasel",
"Wet Seal",
"Divemaster Edition",
"Saber-toothed Squirrel", etc.
List here
Not even animal names, as seen with Ubuntu names.
Even MS is on board, at least for internal betas. I remember installing a Windows 95 beta ("Chicago"; I was drunk, it seemed a good idea).
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
I think you're not taking into account the disconnect that marketing has with the technical groups. Maybe not by design, perhaps even against it, but that's the way the real world is.
I'm sure a dozen people or more will come up with valid counter examples. The above is a general statement and honestly more of a guess, am I wrong?
Those who can, do.
As I go through the day and occasionally read comments like the above, I find myself wondering the exact nature of the mental illness that would cause someone to write such a post. The post has no relevance to the OP, and neither the title or the text is funny...just strange. So is this writer on something? Stoned? On another specific drug or a combination? Perhaps they are drunk.
Or perhaps the person is mentally ill, or is perhaps autistic. What is the exact nature of the mental illness?
Perhaps the person is both mentally ill and on drugs and drunk. Their spelling is acceptable, so they aren't completely out of it, and the sentence makes sense, but bears no relation to anything relevant in this thread.
Let us ponder these things.
Perhaps the poster couldn't think of anything else to bash Apple on today. You're not a proper slashdotter unless you write one Anti-Apple post a day. to keep the Jobs away.
Hey these marketing guys are fucking brilliant ! What a history of consistent names !
Remember when we reached the year 2000, they released ME : Millennium Edition, that was brilliant, not only you'd reached the year 2000 but it was more than that: a new Millennium, a future of brightness.
And then XP: ouch ! You got a kick in the balls. XP what did that mean ? Xtreme Punch or something like that : ouch brilliant !
And Vista, amazing ! Rock solid ! Vista, what did that mean ? Was it some kind of disease you get in south America countries ? No, it was a verb, it meant everything, it was everywhere. Families used it everyday: I'm gonna Vista to the mall. I caught my husband Vista-ing around ! Will you shut the Vista up ! And so on...
And Windows7, brilliant, very surprising, amazing : yes this one went to 7 ! It brought disruption, and surprise !
And then Windows8, very innovative ! You'd thought they'd go to Windows Falcon or some cat name : Windows Super Hyper Intrepid Tiger ? No, they avoided the trap, that was innovative ! Brilliant !
But I recommend they not go to far in innovation : Windows9 OK, still surprising, but not too far. Windows10 : no, very predictible, they'd risk some lame jokes : Hey, do you know there are 10 kinds of Windows10 users ? No ? Those who count in binary and those who don't !
I'm excited to know what will come next !
I was a member of the Windows 7 dev team.
The reason why Windows 7 is labeled 6.1 internally has nothing to do with the amount of churn or the number of new features. The 6.1 vs. 7.0 debate was a struggle internally, as every time we bump the major version number, many applications that incorrectly do version checking will stop working correctly. As Vista (6.0) clearly had compat issues, we wanted Windows 7 to be much smoother. And in this case, this meant keeping the internal major version number (which few users see) the same.
Of course, we had to weigh this compat decision against the PR of the tech crowd, which always assumes the version number of any product has a direct relation to the degree of changes (hint: it never does). I think we made the right call, but that doesn't stop people from claiming 6.1 means minor changes, or that it is a kernel version, or other theories.
How are you going to complain about "Windows 7" but not even mention "Honeycomb" or "Ice Cream Sandwich" -- or what about Raspberry Pie?
The summary, folks here and the TFA(didn't read fully!) seem to be missing the point about why the internal Windows Version is 6.1 for Windows 7. The reason is that a LOT of software, drivers and other utilities have this kind of code in them:
if(first letter of Windows Version Number) is not 6 Print 'Error, OS not compatible'
Even though the software is fully compatible with the OS(because they didn't change the driver model from Vista), the non updated software from old CDs etc. throw up this error. To get around this issue, Windows internally names it 6.1, so the offending software thinks it's on some Vista service pack. Also, this is an *internal* version number compared to Apple's and Ubuntu's OSes which are the marketing names, so I don't even see why this was brought up except as flamebait.
I prefer version number, but they rev so fast that it's irrelevant. Not to mention that when they released on iOS (which is merely a wrapper on WebKit, not a full app with some of the original Chrome bits), they didn't start at 1.0. Had Chrome on my phone for a couple of months, and it's telling me I have an update available for 21.0.1180.80.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
I figure that Windows 6 was the original Longhorn that never shipped. That makes Windows 7 Windows 7.
I dont mind the naming conventions, they dont bother me in the least, let the marketing boys have their fun...
What i find a much larger irritation though (and im looking you here ubuntu) is when os's cross bread names and numbers. I remember numbers. At home i have every version of ubuntu since 10.04 and most version of fedora since 10, some are virtual some are physical. Everytime i go to do something to one of my ubuntu boxes that revolves around software i almost always end up doing the same thing: what is the name of version 10.04 (11.04, 11.10, 10.10, 12.04, etc) cause of the half-witted way ubuntu use version names and number interchangeably. This is something fedora (or redhat based os's) has gotten very right.
its really not hard to figure out (either go see wikipedia or whatever), but its one of my pet irritations with ubuntu - cross-breading of names and numbers in frustrating ways. When im trying to figure out "ok, i need this bit of software over here" and its in a ppa and theres a complex set of tasks im gunna need to perform (or ever just a case of doing the same thing on several boxes at once) i really dont ALSO want to have to decode names and numbers at the same time - its just adding a layer of "heres something else you can get wrong buddy" to the whole equation and i think ubuntu really should rethink that scheme (though obviously their not going to).
The odd names of Ubuntu releases significantly help narrow Google search results. For a Linux distribution that uses alphabetically sequential animal names, I always assumed that they would use "penguin" when they got to the letter P. However, their usage of "pangolin" for the latest release turns out to be a far better choice. When I recently ran into a RAID bug, my Google for "pangolin" included far fewer results and allowed me to find the fix much faster than a more popular name would have allowed.
we could have OS X Manky Moggy
To get around this issue, Windows internally names it 6.1, so the offending software thinks it's on some Vista service pack.
Correctly, many would say.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Names can be protected by Trademark law. Numbers can't be.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Only fuckfaces like you give a shit. DIAF already.
I did a recent blog post specifically on how the names of Microsoft OS releases were...lame...or odd...in one respect or another.
Other names for commercial products are as bad or worse. Except perhaps the "Total Bitch" line of hair products. It would be great to work in marketing, coming up with names. Like working for the Onion or the National Enquirer. You go in a room with a box of botanical matter just shipped in from the Amazon and try to think up the weirdest stuff you can. "Pickup Truck Found on Moon". Name everything using the latin names of insect body parts. Quechua names for medicinal plants. Papiamentu words for female body parts. Those would be consistent.
I find absurd names endearing in a way...
I personally much rather saying that my old Android ran "Cupcake" instead of claiming it used "1.5"... It's kinda cute in a way, and when used in conversation, it almost lightens whatever the topic is...
Really, try to sound disgruntled when saying that your phone runs on "Ice Cream Sandwich".
The arch foe.
X = 10.
My latest "MAC SE 68k" System was System 7.3 or so.
On Power Macs I'm pretty sure there was System 8, and I know people that had System 9 developer versions installed.
So System X (aka 10) is nothing special.
Hm, you mean we had 10.1, 10.2, 10 .... and now 10.7?
What is so surprising? Unlike other companies, System X 10.1 versus X 10.7 is more or less still the same!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Perhaps the poster couldn't think of anything else to bash Apple on today. You're not a proper slashdotter unless you write one Anti-Apple post a day. to keep the Jobs away.
but isn't he dead? or is he just resting and Pining for the fijords?
I worked for a company who marketed their product's successor to "4.0" as "4.A". Not "4.0a". FOUR POINT A!
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
How did Java codenames go from Merlin to Tiger, Mustang, and Dolphin? They also love to drop the "1." from their version numbers.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Truth. 7 is truly a whole lot better than Vista but under the hood, it's pretty much the same engine.
When they decided to call the 80586 a Pentium to keep cyrix, harris, amd, idt, etc from naming their products the same.
But, now days for software it seems like if you hire a marketdroid they have to justify their existence by renaming your product/company/etc every year or two.
This isn't why Windows 7 is 6.1, or why Windows 8 is 6.2.
The reason is that Windows 7 actually is just a minor revision on Vista, and 8 is a minor revision from that. Under the hood, the big changes were between NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 (Windows NT 5), then between 2000 and Vista (Windows 6). The changes from 5.0 to 5.1 (2000 to XP) or from 6.0 to 6.1 to 6.2 (Vista, 7, and 8) were incremental in nature as far as the inner workings of the OS are concerned.
The real reason 7 felt so much faster than Vista: When they made Vista, they planned on you booting up very infrequently, so they scheduled a lot of junk to happen at boot and login, thinking that users would just 'sleep' instead of rebooting. Windows 7 (And Vista SP2) backs off a bit and does the housekeeping when you're not using the computer. Vista actually wasn't really 'slow', it's just 'irrationally busy' doing stuff with the I/O (indexing, precaching, defragmenting, etc.) while you're just trying to get to your gosh-darned desktop.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Being as you were not around before that happened. I will tell you there use to be sanity to it but one day a version came out that was X.1 and another company made there's x.2 even though the never had a x.1 to jump the shark and stop people from thinking y.1 was worse tan x.1 so it was off to the races to make it all mean nothing at all. now you can release anything you dont have to have osxvx.
The real reason 7 felt so much faster than Vista: When they made Vista, they planned on you booting up very infrequently, so they scheduled a lot of junk to happen at boot and login, thinking that users would just 'sleep' instead of rebooting. Windows 7 (And Vista SP2) backs off a bit and does the housekeeping when you're not using the computer. Vista actually wasn't really 'slow', it's just 'irrationally busy' doing stuff with the I/O (indexing, precaching, defragmenting, etc.) while you're just trying to get to your gosh-darned desktop.
Also, the reason people had fewer compatibility problems with 7 isn't because Microsoft fixed the OS, it's because software and hardware vendors fixed their applications and drivers.
If you tried to do anything useful on Windows Vista within the first six months after it was released, you probably had a miserable experience. If you tried to do the same stuff on Windows 7 within the first six months of that OS's release, it probably worked fine. What people don't realize is that if you did a clean install of Vista when Windows 7 was released, it would have worked fine too, because the apps had been fixed by then.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
11 sounds like a whimp,
what do you expect from a committee?
and Apple had so much success with System 7 that MS had to copy it.
It's just marketing.
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I can't count the number of times I've searched for help with some Ubuntu problem only to be unable to determine which instructions I should follow because I don't know which version I have. I know neither the numbers nor the stupid name. How do I find out? Am I just supposed to have remembered this from when I installed it?
Seems I can download it without seeing it referred to as anything other than "Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS 32 bit" which kind of goes along with my impression that these stupid code names are worse than useless as they keep users from knowing what applies to them.
I had the same problem with my MacBook. In the GUI I could find the version number, but every fucking web site wanted to use some cutsy name which I never could figure out whether or not it applied to my MacBook. I similarly saw a lot of "2nd generation" and "3rd generation" and "4th generation" specific instructions on the Gentoo Linux wiki which also left me with no clue which instructions applied to my MacBook, though I see that now they've kindly added in parenthesis after these useless "generations" exactly what I should look for in the computer to determine which instructions to follow. (Actually what they were getting at was what version of wireless chipset I have -- so why the fuck not just say that? It didn't for the year or so that I actually cared to try to run Gentoo on the fucking thing.) They also kept referring to one model as "santa rosa" for some fucking reason I never could figure out. Nor did I ever figure out if that was the model I had. Meanwhile, the whole fucking time, I was able to just look in the Mac OS menus and find both my OS version and my hardware version. ...and the hardware version was even written on the bottom of the laptop. ...but for some reason no one wanted to identify the things by anything that was easy to find.
These cutsy names are good for nothing more than fanboys to masturbate to. Everyone who is trying to get something done is far better off with an actual version number.
And a reason for poor uptake of Vista over 7 was immature image deployment and customization tools. Half the options weren't documented, and the process was very unclear. By the time 7 came out, there was enough backfill on the documentation and examples online for people like me to actually work on customizing corporate images.
This is actually something that's woefully inadequate in the Linux world, real-world examples of the cool stuff you can do with HOWTOs for building a server and clients that are running off of shared volumes and centralized authentication. All the parts are there, and they work fantastically, but you sort of have to figure it out yourself how to put it all together.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
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I'm personally waiting for "Wascally Wabbit".
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And that day was when Intel followed the 486 with the Pentium after a fairly modest architectural change (limited dual issue) and then followed that with the Pentium Pro, which I regard as the largest architectural change (at the execution layer) in the history of x86.
The Pentium went pretty fast on selected benchmarks whereas the Pentium Pro went pretty fast on everything but a Microsoft OS != Windows NT (it also went pretty fast on everything at once--the server workloads). It just happens that the code generation strategy used for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 were particularly loathsome to whole-register dataflow.
Aside from trademark issues with 586, Intel faced the problem of convincing people that a 60MHz 586 was faster than a 90MHz 486 (this was only true on selected benchmarks and at significantly higher power consumption levels, but who's counting?) When the Pro came along, on consumer Windows there was very little ILP performance gain to upsell with a disjoint name. If you were buying NT 4.x, you could do the math yourself.
Microsoft was coming up with weird names for a different reason: to distance themselves from their own product history. And also to keep the rubes away from the hardship of running an OS that actually worked (and therefore necessarily broke all your crapware device drivers).
I suppose this is why Henry didn't just number his wives, or keep the first one around for a long time. Or maybe it was just the wife who got the shivers when beckoned as "seven of nine" (evidently he died before his time).
while using new animal and desert names in alphabetical order is a bit obnoxious (they could do without making them alphabetical), at least it is consistent. What microsoft's naming convention is for windows, i'll never understand...