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

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

[Andrewkov]

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

Not sure what the next one will be called..

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.

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.

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.