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?"

Comments

Marketing

[WillAdams]

Apple never would've been able to convince the Mac faithful to purchase OPENSTEP 5.0, &c.

Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot trademark numbers.

Also, for most non-techies, it is easier to remember "Tiger" than "10.4"

Re:Easy

[vlm]

You cannot trademark numbers.

Also, for most non-techies, it is easier to remember "Tiger" than "10.4"

I'd disagree on the latter. Which came first, Debian Potatoe or Debian Sarge? Damfino (well, actually I do, but,...) However every noob knows 2005 is more recent than 2000.

Where I work, internally, its all git-flow, and our releases have really boring, yet informative, names which are basically of the format:

release/`date +%Y-%M-%d`

Like today's heroic effort would be release/2012-09-11

This date structure also helps with git-flow features, obviously you can't have two "add some bs" branches but you can have "2012-06-01-add-some-bs" and "2012-08-13-add-some-bs"

If one of my coworkers gets outta whack about last monday's release I know exactly what he's talking about, that would be release/2012-08-27 Or I can even find 2012-06-18. But "Rumbly Rumpelstiltskin v2.1D" WTF is that? thats just unprofessional.

Re:Easy

[jythie]

Non-techies?

I would wager the engineers play a big role in all these names. Just look at what happens when the are asked to start naming their servers....

Re:Easy

[Andrewkov]

Still better than their other naming convention, "The New iPad".

Not sure what the next one will be called..

Re:Easy

[Darinbob]

But it's harder to remember that Tiger is newer or older than Panther or Leopard.

Solaris?

[Dog-Cow]

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.

Huh?

[Missing.Matter]

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.

Because Marketing != Version Control

[Aquitaine]

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.

Re:And what's the deal with names anyway?

[hairyfeet]

Besides that, isn't TFA judging Windows by the exact same thing we are told NOT to judge by when it comes to Linux, aka 'Linux is just a kernel'? After all it is the kernel that is WinNT 6.1 whereas the distro (again using Linux terminology) is Windows 7.

Can't have your cake and eat it to, rules are rules and if you want people to call it Ubuntu Myopic Monkey instead of Linux then call Windows by the name and OSX by the name.

Re:And what's the deal with names anyway?

[Obfuscant]

Version numbers are entirely arbitrary. It's not like version 2 actually corresponds to the 2nd build is it...

Version numbers are a lot less arbitrary than artsy-fartsy names like "Dapper Drake" or "Mangled Melon" or whatever Ubuntu is up to today. Nobody said that version numbers match the "build", but they do match the releases.

I find it much easier to understand that CentOS 6.1 is a newer version than CentOS 6.0, for example, than trying to remember that "Killer Kangaroo" is newer than "Sloppy Sloth".

Why get upset when someone decides that OS 10 is something special, or that the first version will be 3, the second 3.1 and the third 3.14.

I don't think anyone does.

The real reason Windows has the version number...

[mystikkman]

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.