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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?"
What's the deal? Well - it's hard for me to understand, really. But, it's all about catchwords, buzzwords, noise and nonsense. When I was a kid, we had "sports". Kids today won't settle for mere "sports", instead opting for "extreme sports". Or, more accurately, "Xtreme Sports".
We can expect an "Xtreme Windows" soon, I guess. And, I expect that it will be extremely mundane.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
That's actually one of my favorite games. I usually play it with women. They say something with a color, like "Grab that chartreuse bottle". After 30 seconds of dumb staring, I ask what a chartreuse is. They'll eventually point at the green bottle.. Then I get to explain, guys have a limited color palette. 8 base colors, 3 shades.
Color: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Black, White (and sometimes gray)
Shade: Light, Normal, Dark.
That's it. No more. There's a little overlap with light black, dark white, and the 3 shades of gray.
If you want something in sunny day blue, you'd better be very specific in the guy color palette. If you need more precision than that, RGB, CYKM, HSV, or YUV are acceptable substitutes, but they damned well don't have a list of names that everyone (or anyone) can remember. There may be 16.5 million names for the RGB spectrum, but no one knows what all the names are.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.