Microsoft Announces Windows 10

Today at a press conference in San Francisco, Microsoft announced the new version of their flagship operating system, called Windows 10. (Yes, t-e-n. I don't know.) With the new version of the operating system, they'll be unifying the application platform for all devices: desktops, laptops, consoles, tablets, and phones. As early leaks showed, the Start Menu is back — it's a hybrid of old and new, combining a list of applications with a small group of resizable tiles that can include widgets. Metro-style apps can now each operate inside their own window (video). There's a new, multiple-desktop feature, which power users have been demanding for years, and also a feature that lets users easily grab objects from one desktop and transfer it to another. The command line is even getting some love. The Technical Preview builds for desktops and laptops will be available tomorrow through the Windows Insider Program. They're requesting feedback from customers. Windows 10 will launch in late 2015.

Comments

Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

Still only half as good as Fedora, but if the Fedora folks keeping slipping those dates MS is gonna catch them!

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Aighearach]

Yeah, the feature list sounds like a 90s linux desktop. Is Windows finally ready for the power-user desktop?! This could be the year.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Austerity Empowers]

Doesn't see to have a real shell yet. Bash, csh, tcsh, I don't care. Windows is a gaming OS unless it can put productivity back. Otherwise it's OS X or Linux...

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

oi excuse me? PowerShell is actually pretty damn awesome. It's very powerful.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[benjymouse]

Doesn't see to have a real shell yet. Bash, csh, tcsh, I don't care. Windows is a gaming OS unless it can put productivity back. Otherwise it's OS X or Linux...

PowerShell beats anything *sh on consistency, terseness, expressiveness, risk management, integration, remoting, job control, interactive assistance.

And it is not as dangerous :-)

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[purpledinoz]

I hate that uncaptured function call return values get automatically appended to your function's return values... WTF

Re: Catching up with Fedora

[loufoque]

Try clink. It makes the shell slightly less bad.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

I can certainly appreciate PowerShell for its power, but let's face it: most of the time all that you need is a way to shuttle I/O streams around and manage processes.

Having said that, however, if I need to go back to a Windows-only environment instead of being able to do my development in a VM, I wouldn't bother installing Cygwin; I'd probably bite the bullet and learn PowerShell.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Austerity Empowers]

Except it's not *sh, all my sh* is in *sh, and all my sh* runs on Linux's *sh and OS X's *sh. I'm not interested in being tied to anyone's platform, not in my shell, not in my language (No C#, .NET Obj-C, Swift, other bullshit).

Without *sh the OS is useless to me.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[DocHoncho]

Terseness??

PS C:\> Get-ChildItem

[INSERT LONG ASS LIST OF FILES HERE IN SIMILAR FORMAT TO ls -l THAT SLASHDOT REFUSES TO LET ME POST]

PS C:\> Set-Location dev
PS C:\dev> Get-Content _vimrc .....

How one might obtain a directory listing in a concise format is beyond me.
Sure, those stupid commands are aliased to ls and cd, but the "real" versions are indicative of how all the commands are named. Names only a Java dev could love. Invoke-some-random-command-with-a-very-long-name-for-no-reason. LOL.

My personal favorite, however, is command invocation:

PS C:\> 7z.exe
Bad numeric constant: 7. (What??)

PS C:\> '7z.exe'
7z.exe (Uh...)

PS C:\> & '.\7z.exe' (WTF?)

7-Zip 9.20 Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov 2010-11-18

Every command drags you further and further down into the soul crushing hell that is COM, or whatever the current framework du jour is this year. I suppose it must be useful for something, but I think I'll stick with GnuWin32 and the powershell's idiot cousin, cmd.exe when I absolutely must work on a windows box.

Terseness. Hah. I'm sure the poor sons of bitches stuck administering a bunch of crufty Windows boxes get some millage out of it, but I'll be damned if I'd use it for day to day CLI work.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[geekoid]

So how many computers are fucked becasue of Bash?
I don't see a powershell hack making people do emergency patches.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

All you have shown us is that you don't understand it.
Also, that you're too full of yourself to think that maybe it's you that doesn't know something.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Parker Lewis]

Can I run a "ls" on it? :P

Re: Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you can.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[DocHoncho]

No, I don't understand it. And I don't really feel as though I want to, since I'm only working in a Windows environment because I'm too lazy to switch back and forth between a Linux one for work and Windows for games. I do web development, and it will be a cold day in hell before I touch any part of the MS web stack, so I spend most of my time remoted into one Linux box or another. Cygwin fills in the gaps. .Net? Hmmph, more like .Meh

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I run a "ls" on it? :P

Actually, YES !

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, it's so powerful it even has power right in its name, man. That's how you KNOW it has power...

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[adonoman]

Yes, you can. Except instead of getting back text, which you then have to parse if you want to do anything with, you get back a stream of .NET objects which will be formatted into a text table if you do nothing with them, but also let you do things like this:

ls | where { $_.Length -gt 5000 }

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[adonoman]

It helps that by default it won't run any script files. Once you enable that, it still won't run any remote code unless you enable that. And even then you can restrict it to only run signed code.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[davydagger]

why is that. Other than "I said so", or "open sores sux"

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[davydagger]

exploits come and go. This is one giant exploit in this entire 20 something year history of bash

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

That might be acceptable in PowerShell, since the 'ls' there is a lie, but if you're trying to parse output from a real 'ls' in a real shell script, you're doing it very, very wrong indeed. See this page for details: Why you shouldn't parse the output of ls

tl;dr: File names are slippery sumbitches. Use 'find' instead.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

Powershell does have aliases, you know - with a lot of them built in. Get-ChildItem is aliased to both 'dir' and 'ls'. get-content is aliased to 'gc' and 'type'.

The docs may use the full cmdlet names all the time, but the aliases are what everyone uses day to day.

The '7z' issue is real, I will grant you, but does make sense once you understand the Powershell parsing and execution model. It is annoying, but considering it's basically the only command these days that starts with a number I'm willing to put up with this, and work around it using, guess what - another alias!

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, terseness. Have you heard of this fancy thing called "aliases"? Powershell has quite a few out of the box. For example, "Get-ChildItem" is aliased to... "ls". And "Set-Location" is aliased to "cd". And "Get-Helped" is aliased to "man". And aliases work everywhere, so "man ls" works exactly as you'd expect it to.

On the other hand, when you have no clue of what a particular command might be to do something that you need done, your chances of guessing it in PSh are much higher, because the canonical names are descriptive rather than terse.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Slamtilt]

It's true that it's less dangerous. When you do fuck up, it won't touch the stuff in somewhat-nested directories because the path is too long. So you'll have SOMETHING left.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[steelfood]

The difference between powershell and *sh (besides the obvious many-small-binaries unix philosophy vs the one-giant-blob windows philosophy) is that *sh is both a CLI and a scripting language. Powershell is useful just as a scripting language. Sure you could use powershell as the CLI, but it does seriously suck.

Granted with bash illustrating the problems of a dual-use CLI and shell, separating the two might not be such a bad idea, but it's so much easier transitioning from shell one-liners to full shell scripting than the same from dos commands to powershell scripting. But posix enables this, not any particular unix shell in and of itself.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

it also has the shittiest syntax ever..oh and it's slow as fuck.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you could use powershell as the CLI, but it does seriously suck.

I use powershell as a CLI all the time. It is quite usable. I particularly like the Intellisense that helps you interactively command names, parameters names and your files & directories depending on what you are typing when you press tab. No need to keep diving for man entries. Also, get to know the shortcut aliases as it makes interactive life much easier.

I like Powershell because you can use the same commands to interact with your files, the contents of the files, a database or the output of a web service. It doesn't matter what command starts the pipeline, the same basic filtering and sorting commands work on what should be completely different data types

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[morkk]

You're excused. To someone brought up on 'cmd' PS is probably indistinguishable from magic.
Oh, and congrats, Mickeysoft, on finally figuring how to do wrap-around text selection. Welcome to the 20th century.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd suggest learning powershell properly. It is a paradigm shift and object based. Expect it to work like cmd.exe, bash or whatever and you will be disappointed. Being able to do stuff like iterate over an entire network of machines with a simple for loop within a script is awesome. Being able to extract and process objects rather than fucking around with sed/awk/etc. is awesome. Yes, it has rough edges. Yes it has bugs. But the stuff you can actually do with Powershell if you bother to learn is awesome.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

WIndows is just a tool to do a job like anything else. Wake me up when I can do one-liner stuff in bash like: for ($comp in $comps) { do-stuff $comp }

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[strikethree]

PowerShell beats anything *sh on consistency, terseness, expressiveness, risk management, integration, remoting, job control, interactive assistance.

Excuse you? Will that be an underscore _ or a hyphen - or nothing at all separating your multi-word commands and arguments? Consistently confusing is more like it.

Get-Help about_Signing
help set-executionpolicy

I could go on...

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[dbIII]

Powershell is useful just as a scripting language.

I don't get the point of it when python and a pile of other mature scripting languages work on MS Windows.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Dahan]

Which is pretty cool for scripting; I write pretty much all of my Windows scripts in PowerShell these days, instead of .bat or .vbs. But PS isn't good for interactive use... While filtering for large files isn't something that I do often, I do like to sort ls output by date, or by file size. This is quick and easy to do with Unix-style ls:

ls -lt or ls -lS

But with PowerShell?

ls | sort -property LastWriteTime or ls | sort -property Length

Not something quick and easy to type. Which is too bad--I was hoping for an interactive shell a bit more modern than CMD.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

So run your *sh on Windows then.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[shutdown -p now]

Given that all the Unix shells predate PowerShell by at least two decades, and more for most of them, of course they wouldn't alias PS commands.

And no-one said that PS is better because it has aliases. Aliases are there for convenience of people who come to it from other shells (which is why it has other aliases for people coming from cmd.exe - "dir" works same as "ls", for example, and "help" works like "man" etc). What makes it better is something else - the notion of passing structured data in streams, rather than just text (which is then just a subset). For some things where you have to write insane sed/awk scripts in Unix to massage the text output of a command into something that another command wants, the equivalent PS can be three times as short, and orders of magnitude clearer, because it doesn't need to parse text to extract the data - it just reads the property of an object.

Re: Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you looked for any powershell vulns? Shellshock is so popular because of how important bash is. When there is a PS exploit it's like 'well who uses PS anyway?'

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

ls | sort -property LastWriteTime or ls | sort -property Length

The benefit of this technique is that you can use the same sort command to sort a directory, a CSV import or the result of a web REST service.

You can also use the same familiar structure to do more complicated things like:

ls | where { $_.Length -gt 100000 }

Now what's the command the ls to do that? Or do you need to change to find, and if so what argument format will it use? It wouldn't be the same as ls. While Powershell can be more verbose, it can also be simpler by chaining the basic build-block commands together. For example, you have sorted you folder by LastWriteTime or by Length, but what if you wanted to sort by Length and then LastWriteTime, but only for files over 10KB? What would the Unix-style equivalent be?

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Risk management" and "not as dangerous"?

You have to sign power shell scripts and what have thee. Personally I find it a pain in the arse as you have to jump through hoops to deploy a script.

> "Integration"? What can you "integrate" with that can't already be done as a matter of course on the POSIX equivalents?

Any database. In posix shell land you fire out to a 3rd party tool and hope you can get the content back in a text format you can work with.

In Powershell world you connect to any .NET connectable database and have a result set rather than text.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer, is that you?

Re: Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

Rofl

Pretty much the entire Ms server infrastructure since Server 2008 R2 relies on Powershell for management. This includes exchange and SQL server

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[adonoman]

Since property is the first parameter to sort-object, you can just do:

ls | sort Length/code

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[adonoman]

Which is exactly why powershell is great - you never have to parse things. Anytime I have to drop into sed/awk in Linux, it always feels like I'm fighting the system.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[godefroi]

C:\Program Files\7-Zip
$ ./7z

7-Zip [64] 9.20 Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov 2010-11-18

What's so complicated about that? Feel free to use the .exe as well if it makes you feel better:

C:\Program Files\7-Zip
$ ./7z.exe

7-Zip [64] 9.20 Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov 2010-11-18

If 7z.exe is in your path, no need to give it a directory:

D:\
$ 7z

7-Zip [64] 9.20 Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov 2010-11-18

Also, if you're into terseness, you can use the "gci" alias for Get-ChildItem, or the "dir" alias, or the "ls" alias.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[benjymouse]

... (besides the obvious many-small-binaries unix philosophy vs the one-giant-blob windows philosophy) is that *sh is both a CLI and a scripting language.

PowerShell is not a one-giant-blob. The commands of PowerShell are all of them defined in a module. The core commands comes from a core module. The shell itself does not need "magic" commands like bash and other *sh shells do (for instance, cd could not have been implemented as a loadable command in bash - because it manipulates the environment that is not accessible from external commands).

Even the ability to navigate a file system hierarchy is loadable. PowerShell itself set up infrastructure for navigating "hierarchies" - and a file system is just one such hierarchy. Other providers/hierarchies are certificate store (think advanced keyring), registry, active directory, IIS server virtual file system, SQL server (navigate tables etc).

... is that *sh is both a CLI and a scripting language. Powershell is useful just as a scripting language.

False. PowerShell has many features aimed squarely at interactive user, and frankly there is no other shell that come close:

* Automatic metadata inference: Tab completion, automatic suggestions, syntax help, (parts of) man pages are derived automatically from the command/function definitions. Number, names and types of parameters are declared for cmdlet parameters. Even declarative validators will be picked up. When you type "man somecommand", PowerShell looks up all that information and generates up-to-date call syntax instructions along with whatever man content has been written. It works for built-in commands and functions, user defined commands/functions and even script files. Script files use a param directive to declare parameter names and types.

* Tab completion *and* automatic suggestions (intellisense - in the ISE), again generated from the metadata. Even works for your own script files without having to write completion definitions.

* Risk management. If you invoke commands with -WhatIf or -Confirm, the command will inform you what it *would have* done and inform you what it is *going to do* and ask for your consent, respectively. This is shell infrastructure and it even works for entire script files and nested scripts (when you invoke a script file with -WhatIf it will execute as if all the command invocations had been invoked with -WhatIf).

* Custom actions for warnings, errors, verbose messages and debug messages. You can pass -WarningAction Inquire (or short form -ea Inquire) to have the shell ask you whether it should continue if a command (or script) writes a warning message.

* Progess indicator and input functions infrastructure that work even across job and machine boundaries.

* Get-Credential cmdlet to *securely* obtain credentials from the user - allowing the user to prove identity by not just password, but by any authentication mechanisms available at the workstation, such as card reader, biometric devices, onetime passwords etc. Passwords are guaranteed to *NEVER* be available in memory in clear text (as opposed to bash/Linux).

* Out-Gridview (with alias ogv) lets you present a collection of objects in a GUI list and have the user pick one or many of them. The picked objects will be passed on on the commandline.

* much more

Sure you could use powershell as the CLI, but it does seriously suck.

I suspect that you have never really tried it. And I'm quite sure that you have never used the ISE - which has a command(console) pane but which also has source-level debugging, snippets, multiple script windows, multiple sessions, remote sessions etc.

Granted with bash illustrating the problems of a dual-use CLI and shell, separating the two might not be such a bad idea, but it's so much easier transitioning from shell one-lin

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[RoLi]

WIndows is just a tool to do a job like anything else

No, Windows is a tool that is incompatible to everything else, that is the point.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[RoLi]

So how many computers are fucked becasue of Bash?

A couple of thousand - which is not a lot given the fact that Linux is used on millions of webservers.

From all the alarmism, let's not forget that only RedHat is remotely vulnerable (all the other major distros use dash instead of bash for /bin/sh) and only when you use a seriously outdated CGI-setup.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[benjymouse]

Terseness??

PS C:\> Get-ChildItem

[INSERT LONG ASS LIST OF FILES HERE IN SIMILAR FORMAT TO ls -l THAT SLASHDOT REFUSES TO LET ME POST]

PS C:\> Set-Location dev
PS C:\dev> Get-Content _vimrc .....

How one might obtain a directory listing in a concise format is beyond me.

Ah! That is because in PowerShell, the cmdlets are more true to the Unix principle of doing one thing and do it well: The Get-ChildItem cmdlet is not in the business of formatting output; it's purpose is to find child items. And that is what it does: It finds items and passes them along the pipeline.

If objects "fall off" at the end of the pipeline, they are displayed at the console. PowerShell has a number of built-in formats for displaying various item types. In the case of file system objects (fileinfo and directoryinfo objects) they are formatted very much like what the old dir command did.

But don't let that fool you: It is still objects being passed, and you can format them any way you like.

However, in PowerShell, formatting is the responsibility of a few general formatting commands. Try piping the output of Get-ChildItem through Format-Table, Format-List, Format-Wide. There is even a Format-Custom where you can specify your own formatting.

Format-Table formats the objects in table format, i.e. each item on a separate row, with the properties as columns. You can specify which properties of the objects goes into the columns. You can group and even calculate sums.

Format-List formats items in multiple groups of lines, where each line in is a property name and a value. Again, you can specify which properties goes in the output.

BTW, Get-ChildItem has aliases ls, dir and gci. Format-Table, Format-Wide and Format-List has aliases ft, fw and fl, respectively. So if it is really such a problem that you cannot get the default format of ls, you can do

ls | fw

That is, get the child items of the current directory and format them "wide" - which is spread across multiple columns.

Now, see if you can guess what this one does:

ps | fw

If you guessed it, you are beginning to understand.

Now do a ls | ogv the be blown away.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[cthulhu11]

Oh? I missed the part where support for 95% of the hardware that people try to use was removed.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[badkarmadayaccount]

Cygwin. What's with the love of *sh ? It'd be easier in C FFS.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Optali]

Yes, very powerful. Easy to use too, that's why it's so extremely popular and widespread. Apple and all Linux distros are spending crazy amounts of money and work-hours trying to emulate something as useful, easy and popular as this awesome... how do you say it was called?

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Optali]

Awesome!!! I can't wait using it. I's such a simple and marvellous idea!! You want to list the contents of a directly, then you open the PowerShell, run `ls` and then you get back a stream of random crap that you have to feed into Visual Studio +-, compile it, open it in Excel and export into Powerpoint to see a fucking directory's content. I am amazed.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Optali]

Well, maybe you need to use man a bit more.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Optali]

Nice, trying to run it on my CentOS servers... very useful indeed.

Re:Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

So their initial choice of command names was so incredibly shit they had to override them before release. Yep, high recommendation there.

Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that what Windows 8 was supposed to do? I am confused.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[BarbaraHudson]

You're not the only one, obviously, and that's intentional. By calling it Windows 10, they're trying to put as much distance as possible between it and Windows 8. And make 7 look even more "old".

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Aighearach]

Isn't that what Windows 8 was supposed to do? I am confused.

Where is the confusion? It was supposed to. And now a new version is supposed to. Add those together. Normalize the units. The easy answer, it failed!

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[jd2112]

You're not the only one, obviously, and that's intentional. By calling it Windows 10, they're trying to put as much distance as possible between it and Windows 8. And make 7 look even more "old".

And the OS version will probably report something linke 'Version 6.5.xxxx'

Re: Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

"Itâ(TM)s time for a new Windows. This new Windows must be built from the ground-up for a mobile-first, cloud-first world."

well fuck me, guess it's another couple years of win7

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[bondsbw]

And the OS version will probably report something linke 'Version 6.5.xxxx'

This seems odd, but they do it on purpose for driver compatibility.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[aralin]

Yeah, but... only odd numbered versions don't suck...

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Ravaldy]

Stepping stones. Windows 8 was a wobbly stepping stone but it was a stepping stone. Dev on MS is much easier to cross over platforms than it was in the past.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[VGPowerlord]

Not just driver compatibility.

Windows 7 fixed a bunch of Vista compatibility issues with programs built for XP simply by having the version be set to 6.1.

Turns out that companies doing braindead Windows version detection of

if (majorVersion >= 5 && minorVersion >= 1)

had it fail spectacularly for version 6.0.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually 6.4.xxxx is the version.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

I was watching out for this comment ... just hope windex is the exception to this rule.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[jd2112]

Not just driver compatibility.

Windows 7 fixed a bunch of Vista compatibility issues with programs built for XP simply by having the version be set to 6.1.

Turns out that companies doing braindead Windows version detection of

if (majorVersion >= 5 && minorVersion >= 1)

had it fail spectacularly for version 6.0.

Particularly bad since Windows does have built-in functions to compare version numbers (eg. major.minor.patch.build format)

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

They are just trying to catch up with apple, after all everyone knows that OSX means Operating System 10. Microsoft has been a big player longer they don't want to look like they are behind.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[jsepeta]

a unified experience means putting start menus on phones, like Windows Mobile 6.0 -- which I enjoyed, btw, although it was dog slow. good keyboard and stylus though.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you can't make hosts files look old etc. here stupid http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[emblemparade]

Windows 8 unified tablets and desktops. You can buy a 7" Atom-based tablet right now that you can connect to a dock and get a full desktop experience.

But Windows phones are still different. With Windows 10, you will be able to the above with your phone.

That might not seem like a big deal to you, but it can radically change the computing market. For many people, owning a single computing device (a phone) will be enough. They will just get a dock for a tablet (BlackBerry has this) or for a laptop or for the living room and that's it. Enterprises, too, can invest in fewer gadgets per employee.

Today's phones are powerful enough to run most everyday computing tasks. Obviously not all, but for those people who need the power, workstations and gaming PCs will still be around.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they should call it Windows 99

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but... only odd numbered versions don't suck...

Tell that to (eeek! shudder) Windows 95...

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[tompaulco]

Unified Experience Across Devices

Which basically means that the UI for all platforms are dumbed down to the least capable device.
So which competitor to Windows is offering basically the opposite, ie, an Experience tailored to the device? That's the one I will be buying.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Kjella]

Well, how many times have you seen "let's make our own date/time/number/argument/xml parser"?

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Particularly bad since Windows does have built-in functions to compare version numbers (eg. major.minor.patch.build format)

When did they add that? I remember one time I took a machine that had Windows 3.11 on it and installed Windows NT3.5. The NT Installer said (paraphrased): "Are you sure you want to install 3.5? There is a newer version (3.11) already on this machine."

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you can't make hosts files look old etc. here stupid http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

What DOES get old though is seeing shit about the hosts file again and again ad infinitum ad nauseum.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[timeOday]

Which basically means that the UI for all platforms are dumbed down to the least capable device.

Wrong. What they are claiming is exactly what you asked for:

a tailored experience for all hardware across a single platform family.... Windows 10 will deliver the right experience on the right device at the right time.

I think this is a good vision - you shouldn't need a different technology to target each platform (now that smartphones are fairly powerful); you want consistency in the UI between devices where possible, but that doesn't mean they can or should appear just the same, either. It is a tall order, and one has to question whether it is actually worth it, since switching between Windows and Android (or iOS and OSX) doesn't seem to have caused users' heads to explode, nor have developers been slow to discard PC code and re-implement everything for mobile.

Re: Unified Experience Across Devices

[guruevi]

Windows 9x-ME was really Windows 4 all along. 2000 was version 5, XP-10 is version 6.

Most windows versions suck, regardless of version numbering. They suck less when it comes around to having a third service pack but they're still miles behind a real OS. (I haven't used windows computers at home since windows 3.11)

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[NJRoadfan]

I suspect this is why so many applications failed to run under Windows 2000 despite otherwise being compatible (not using new Win32 calls introduced in XP). That or they were compiled with a newer version of Visual Studio.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Utterly false

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms725492(v=vs.85).aspx

Re: Unified Experience Across Devices

[PsychoSlashDot]

Windows 9x-ME was really Windows 4 all along. 2000 was version 5, XP-10 is version 6.

I don't want to be pedantic, but since we're all being pedantic, I guess I'll do it anyway. You're looking at the wrong codebase. The predecessor of Win2k (v5) was WinNT 4 (v4). The predecessor of that was WinNT 3.5 (v3.5). The predecessor of that Was WinNT 3.1 (v3.1).

WinME was based on the consumer codebase that (in inverted order) was Win3.x, Win95, Win98, WinME. The entire Win9X/ME series reported internal version 4.x but that had nothing to do with the codebase we run today. Again, Win95 was literally v4.0 and Win98 was v4.1 but the current kernel had its very own v4 (and v3) and WinME wasn't it.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[tompaulco]

I don't care for consistency in UI between my smart phone and my desktop. On my smartphone, I am stuck with a tiny screen, with not input method other than my fingers and a couple of buttons. On my desktop, I have a mouse and keyboard, which are dozens of times more efficient. I only use my smart phone for apps if I don't have a more efficient method readily available at the moment. I have no desire to be stuck with that input method on my desktop.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

or, just, ya know:

version = major * 10 + minor
if (version > 51) { ...
}

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously why was that marked as interesting or insightful. windows has ALWAYS had builtin API to retrieve major minor, build number etc. previously through GetVersionEx and now through the version helper API. Don't mod up ignorance.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[jd2112]

Well, how many times have you seen "let's make our own date/time/number/argument/xml parser"?

Weeks of programming can save you from the arduous task of 5 minutes of searching Google.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[shutdown -p now]

Windows 8 was unified experience for all devices, so long as by "unified" you meant "behaves like a tablet".

This is an unified experience in a sense of the same app running on all platforms from phone to tablet to desktop, and with some UI notions that are meaningful across all devices working everywhere (e.g. a live tile behaves the same on phone/tablet start screen, or in the desktop start menu), while also recognizing that, no, not every device is a tablet, and so many things have to be tailored to the device in question - such as the return of Start menu, and the ability to run store apps in windows, on the desktop.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[unixisc]

You're not the only one, obviously, and that's intentional. By calling it Windows 10, they're trying to put as much distance as possible between it and Windows 8. And make 7 look even more "old".

I saw the video. The thing looks like Windows 7 when the keyboard is joined at the hip, and when it's removed to make it a tablet mode, it looks like Windows 8. Given this, Microsoft could have named this thing Windows 15 - adding up 7 & 8.

I hated Windows 8 - so I removed it, and replaced it w/ PC-BSD, and now there's no looking back. However, the good news on this one is that people can now skip Windows 8 and go directly to Windows 10. I think they want to make the even numbers attractive, instead of the odd.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Wolfrider]

--That will get you a very loud AMEN. We don't necessarily *need* a unified input method for tablets, phones and desktops - but they keep trying to force it on us. Desktop is an entirely different beast, one that most people are more familiar with - and *have* to be productive on.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[similar_name]

Just run setver

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[xvan]

To lazy to search, but what are they planning to do for addressing the arch compatibility issues?
Wasn't that the main cause why the ditched their RT version? Users were unable to gasp the difference between the devices and ended returning them?

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

To lazy to search, but what are they planning to do for addressing the arch compatibility issues?

That is what .NET is designed to address. The Metro apps were all architecture-agnostic. The problem was the RT version could not run old desktop applications, and that was what surprised people.

Re: Unified Experience Across Devices

[epyT-R]

No. XP was 5.1, 2003 and xp64 was 5.2

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[shutdown -p now]

It's not clear. Someone at the presentation actually asked a question about Win10 tablets and ARM, but it was dodged and redirected towards phones.

Re: Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

5.11 > 6.0 ?

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[sillybilly]

They are trying to kill the desktop to usher everyone onto the cloud based, will not run off the network, smart phone world, by potty training everyone on the desktop to use it like a smart phone. I like that my computers can run offline, with files stored offline, but the NSA and the like, don't. What if there is an economic crash, and a zombie apocalypse, and the internet goes down, and all my cloud based files halfway across the continent are inaccessible? How about if the cellular system crashes and goes down, how will I use my phone offline? I don't have smartphones, but the cellphones I have refuse to run without a SIM, or they run in 911 mode where I can't even look at the images stored on the phone's memory.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[spongman]

who's to say the supposed built-in would perform any better?

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[jd2112]

who's to say the supposed built-in would perform any better?

It's comparing numbers, not exactly rocket science.
Perhaps some custom code might run faster but how many times does a program need to compare version numbers during execution?

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[strikethree]

Dev on MS is much easier to cross over platforms than it was in the past.

How can it be easier since you can only develop for ONE platform. Microsoft.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[hcs_$reboot]

Nadella wants to put some distance between Ballmer and himself. Starting from 10 is a good start (and a new design, new features would also help ...)

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Hallå AlexAndy!

Trying to make host files look old is like trying to make water look wet.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[davester666]

Um, Windows is set to use bing by default....and everybody prefers not to use it.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

In major.minor.patch.build format, 3.11 IS higher than 3.5.

Like Linux 3.16 (current) is newer than 3.2 (2012).

Windows 3.11 was not major.minor.patch.build format, but plain decimal format, as shown by the later release of Windows 3.2.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

And also because they haven't actually done the full rewrite that a major version increment would imply... They just want to market it as a different, new thing so they can sell it all over again.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Half-pint HAL]

I don't care for consistency in UI between my smart phone and my desktop. On my smartphone, I am stuck with a tiny screen, with not input method other than my fingers and a couple of buttons.

Are you? Higher end Android devices can be hooked up to a USB keyboard and an HDMI equipped screen. If Windows 10 switches into desktop mode when docked with a screen, keyboard and mouse (or the phone screen becomes a glorified touchpad) then it will be the computing device I've been waiting for for over a decade. (But it probably won't, because that would cut into their sales figures.)

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[AmiMoJo]

To be fair it seems like they are offering different UIs for different devices now, but all in the same underlying OS and with the same apps. It could work well if done right. For example Chrome is the same code base on desktop and mobile devices, and the UI varies between them as needed. It even varies between phone and tablet.

Of course, it remains to be see if they can pull it off.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[asylumx]

WP 8 and 8.1 are WAY better than WM6. Have you tried using a windows phone lately? It's actually a very good experience. Even Apple fanbois are starting to convert.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[VGPowerlord]

Very likely.

I thought I saw an article about why the version number was 6.1 in Raymond Chen's Old New Thing blog, but my Google-fu is apparently failing to locate it.

Re: Unified Experience Across Devices

[Sun]

Just to add pedanticity (pedanticness?) to the discussion....

You forgot Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98SE, both technically OS versions of their own.

Shachar

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[RoLi]

Microsoft marketing has a way to forget the past.

I remember how they were so proud of Windows-Phone (~2% marketshare) because it was so much more "successful" than the old Windows-Mobile (~10% marketshare).

Or look at the XBox: First they proclaimed that they would just sink a couple of billion to "build the platform" - and look how that worked for XBone. Of course it doesn't make any sense when you break compatibility with every new version: Any XBox version is a incompatible to any other version, so they are different platforms.

I guess that kind of incompetence and stupidity is a consequence of having just too much money flowing in from over 20 year old products (Windows and Office).

Basically Microsoft could just sit back and release Windows with a new wallpaper and small updates - but they even screwed that up with Windows 8.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[RoLi]

You luddite! Next you will tell me you want different interfaces for your refrigerator and your car!

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

So which competitor to Windows is offering basically the opposite, ie, an Experience tailored to the device? That's the one I will be buying.

Try Kubuntu with KDE. That's likely what you want. I happen to love it - One UI and codebase (Plasma) that detects and tailors to the device (tablet, pc, media center, etc.).

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Ravaldy]

Yes. Same code for phone, tablet and PC. Arm or X86. That's the beauty of their dev tools. Little to no tweaking between devices. This isn't the case for Apple or Linux.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[StikyPad]

Given this, Microsoft could have named this thing Windows 15 - adding up 7 & 8.

Technically 15 is 7 OR 8.

7 AND 8 is 0. Which might actually be more appropriate. Windows 0.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[macs4all]

Stepping stones. Windows 8 was a wobbly stepping stone but it was a stepping stone. Dev on MS is much easier to cross over platforms than it was in the past.

But seriously (and I'm not Trolling here) :

IMHO, Mobile Applications are, for the most part, very rarely directly translatable in either scope or purpose to Desktop or Server Applications; so what is to be gained by making the poor Developer have to be saddled with a Presentation Layer (GUI) that is an absolute Train-Wreck between Touch and Non-Touch paradigms?

I understand how they can share a common kernel and SOME Frameworks/APIs, and maybe even the (very) occasional GUI concept; but that's where it should end. But it doesn't.

Truth be told, I would bet that not one Application in 1,000 actually benefits more than 10% from a "Unified Codebase". The only product that looks to be designed with this in mind is the Surface Pro 3, And that is not the Game-Changer that Microsoft is touting it to be. Too heavy and expensive for a Tablet; and simply not good enough compared with other Laptops at the same price-point. They keep trying to compare it with Apple's entry-level ultraportable (the one that sacrifices many other things for the sake of "small"; but if you look at the pricing, it should be more-fairly compared with something like a 13 inch Macbook Pro, where these folks say that it loses hands-down.

Nope. I'll give MS some points for trying to rescue Windows 8; but they are suffering from the "Gone too far to go back." syndrome, and it's going to (continue to) bite them, bad. Really bad...

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[macs4all]

WP 8 and 8.1 are WAY better than WM6. Have you tried using a windows phone lately? It's actually a very good experience. Even Apple fanbois are starting to convert.

Yeah, something like 10 million of them converted just last weekend...

To another iPhone.

Idiot.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[macs4all]

Are you? Higher end Android devices can be hooked up to a USB keyboard and an HDMI equipped screen. If Windows 10 switches into desktop mode when docked with a screen, keyboard and mouse (or the phone screen becomes a glorified touchpad) then it will be the computing device I've been waiting for for over a decade. (But it probably won't, because that would cut into their sales figures.)

So, what you are saying is that the idea of One GUI To Rule Them All is a fucking joke; just like the "other side" is saying, right?

This just means your Mobile Device (which is always going to be more resource-starved than even the weakest Desktop) is going to be saddled with a bunch of Desktop GUI-cruft that it may never use, depending on the Application and User's Tastes. Because it ain't just a matter of Start Menu vs. Metro Tiles. It's a whole different paradigm.

And at least Apple is smart enough to know that. There have been some "leaks" from iOS into OS X; but if you look at them, it has been done in a very considered, and generally low-key way, largely to the benefit of the Desktop experience. Not what Redmond is foisting on the world. Simply no comparison. I'm not cheerleading Apple here; I am just saying that you simply cannot just shove a Mobile, Touch-Based UI down the Desktop-User's throat. And having a Mobile Device that has a schizoid UI that flips back and forth??? Yeah, Suzy Homemaker and Joe Sixpack are gonna dig that, yeahrightsure...

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not Windows Ten, it's Windows 10 - Windows 2 in decimal notation. Windows for Workgroups could have built on Windows 10's features. It would have been so cool if only Windows 10 had come out on time, ahead of Windows 3.1.

Oh, well, at least it's finally here.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices

[Half-pint HAL]

My mobile phone is more powerful than my first mini-tower, IBM compatible PC. The processor is more powerful and there's more onboard RAM than the hard-disk of said PC. That PC did well enough for all my coursework programming projects and all my write-ups including my honours project. If you want to play the latest games or edit HD video you need a full spec PC, anything else... not so much.

Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like jumping a shark, innit?

Re:Skipping a version number

[TubeSteak]

They're not skipping a version number.
Windows 9 is basically going to be a Service Pack for Windows 8.

Confirmed: Windows 9 to be a free upgrade for Windows 8 users

Releasing Win10 so quickly supports the idea that Win9 is just an update.
Win10 is really what they want all the Win7 users to move to.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

well some people wanted to call windows 8.1 windows 9.

Also how long before we have firefox 50?

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

Also how long before we have firefox 50?

(50-32)*6 = 108 weeks

Re:Skipping a version number

[Aighearach]

It gives a +1 to all Shark Jump saving throws for 6 months, but they have to spend an extra 1m GP explaining it.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

The week after next.

Re:Skipping a version number

[omnichad]

We've already had 95 and 98. Those both start with a 9...

Re:Skipping a version number

[WheezyJoe]

Microsoft has never respected numbers much.
Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, Windows 95, NT 4, Windows 98, Win2000, Windows ME, WinXP, Windows 7, Windows 8.... you see? all over the place.
What they DO tend to respect is focus groups, and they maybe determined that 10 is sexier than 9, perhaps to imply more distance from (pfft) 8
(or steal from spotlight from OS X)?

Re:Skipping a version number

[UnknownSoldier]

What's is really strange is that I just posted this a few hours earlier ...

> LOL. Microsoft admit they were wrong or clueless? That's funny!
> They just release a new version with revised function, form, and don't talk about the previous version hoping that it will eventually go away.

Re:Skipping a version number

[BarbaraHudson]

Not quite. If you read the article, what the article is calling "Windows 9" is now "Windows 10."

Also, from the same site, if your computer came with Windows 8 installed, you'll have to pay to upgrade. Which ain't gonna happen.

Re:Skipping a version number

[jd2112]

They're not skipping a version number. Windows 9 is basically going to be a Service Pack for Windows 8.

Confirmed: Windows 9 to be a free upgrade for Windows 8 users

Releasing Win10 so quickly supports the idea that Win9 is just an update. Win10 is really what they want all the Win7 users to move to.

Of course in typical Microsoft fashion they will probably not allow direct upgrades from Win7-Win10 (probably not even Win8-Win10)

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

And so that's why they're officially calling it Windows 9 instead of Windows 8 SP1 - so there's no confusion over whether or not people should feel like they're suppose to be getting the upgrade for free.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

We've already had 95 and 98. Those both start with a 9...

And we've already had Windows 1.0.

That started with a 1... so what's your point?

Re:Skipping a version number

[Minwee]

Calling it "Windows 8.2" would support the idea that Windows 9 was just an update.

Skipping straight to Windows 10 makes it look like they're either just messing with us, or trying to compete with WordPerfect again.

Re:Skipping a version number

[BarbaraHudson]

There will be no free upgrade if your computer came with Win8.x pre-installed. And there is not going to be a Windows 9 - they skipped directly to 10.

The Windows 9 upgrade might not be as free as initially believed

... just those customers who have purchased a Windows 8 (or Windows 8.1) copy will qualify for free upgrades. Users who have purchased a computer with Windows 8 preinstalled (OEM version of the software) will have to pay a fee.

Guess they wanted to catch up to Apple OSX version 10. Same as when one linux distro would bump their version number, others would to, even if that meant skipping a few digits in the process, so they wouldn't seem "behind."

Re:Skipping a version number

[BarbaraHudson]

Or they really, really want to make Windows 7 look obsolete, because, like the people who refused to upgrade from XP, it's "good enough."

Good enough so that the old joke "Q: Why is the number 10 scared? A: Because 7 8 9" would be the joke de jour to "explain why 9 (or 10) can't get market traction" :-)

Re:Skipping a version number

[Newander]

I'm not sure that this wasn't intended, but you forgot Vista.

Re:Skipping a version number

[SJHillman]

Here's the thing... those are are marketing numbers, not version numbers. If you go by their internal version numbers, they make a lot more sense, and better reflect incremental changes vs total rewrites.

Windows 2000 - 5.0
Windows XP - 5.1
Windows XP 64-Bit/Server 2003 (incl R2) - 5.2
Windows Vista/Server 2008 - 6.0
Windows Server 2008 R2 - 6.1
Windows 7 - 6.1
Windows 8 - 6.2
Windows Server 2012 R2 - 6.3
Windows 8.1 - 6.3

Before Windows 2000/XP, there were two completely separate OSes (NT and DOS), rather than simply different editions of the same OS. Because 2000 and later are the successors to NT, that's why it starts with 5.0.

So why did NT start at 3.x? Because it started life as the successor to OS/2 1.3 and 2.0, known as OS/2 3.0. When it shifted to become Windows rather than OS/2, it kept the version number.

The DOS based Windows go: 1.01, 1.03, 1.04, 2.0, 2.10, 2.11, 3.00, 3.10, 3.11, 3.2, 4.0 (Win95), 4.10 (Win98), 4.90 (WinMe)

Windows versioning numbers makes a lot more sense once you separate the marketing name from the actual version number. MS Office works the same way (e.g. Office 10 is Office XP).

Re:Skipping a version number

[Megol]

NB that the major version number doesn't increase even for extensive rewrites of the core system. The reason is allegedly for compatibility.

Re:Skipping a version number

[I'm New Around Here]

Wait. what? I'm still on version 5.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong. That article is speculation about what some people thought MS would do. Today at this event, they straight up said they were not releasing a Windows 9 at all. Not that it would just be a service pack for 8 or 8.1. There will not be any product called "Windows 9" in any form.

Re:Skipping a version number

[LinuxIsGarbage]

At work I'm on 3.6. Just as they finally moved us from IE6 to FF, it was at version 3.6... which because 18 versions out of date pretty promptly

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Ubuntu is already on version 14.04, so Windows is still behind at version 10. ;-)

Re:Skipping a version number

[DocHoncho]

I can!

Something very much like the, uh, modern hosts file was originally specified by rfc952 in 1985. So the venerable hosts file is nearly 30 years old! That's like 10,000 in computer years!

QED.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't give half a fsck about Windows but this is pretty informative, thanks.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you can't make hosts files look old etc. here stupid http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

Nobody likes a smartarse, APK, however as you aren't particularly smart you needn't worry. Unfortunately for you, people don't like stalking arseholes much either.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no way that Windows can compete with WordPerfect. Never could.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

Its comedic how much effort you're putting in to comments focusing on the version number being 10 rather than 9. When did the audience of slashdot change such that instead of technical discussions it's become all about marketing and licensing. Who really gives a shit about the name of it?

Re:Skipping a version number

[BarbaraHudson]

Its comedic how much effort you're putting in to comments focusing on the version number being 10 rather than 9. When did the audience of slashdot change such that instead of technical discussions it's become all about marketing and licensing. Who really gives a shit about the name of it?

Obviously Microsoft does, and their marketing department told them "get as far from 7 and 8 as possible. We need to make 7 look old and obsolete, or nobody will upgrade. And you already know why we need to put extra space between 8 and the next version."

In effect, this is confirming what many people think. Windows 7 is the new Windows XP - it's going to be hard to get people to make the upgrade, because it already does what they want, and the next version (Windows 8 in the case of Windows 7, and Vista in the case of XP) really sucked^Wfailed to meet user expectations. In both cases, the previous version got heavily entrenched and became almost impossible to move from.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Insanity Defense]

NT started at 1.0. It jumped to 3.1 to synchronize version numbers with Windows 3.1 for DOS. Couldn't have people thinking NT was behind DOS/Windows.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

> So why did NT start at 3.x?

It was not your 'explanation', it was simply because Windows NT 3.1 used the same 3.1 user interface as Windows 3.1.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously Microsoft does

I'm sure Microsoft cares about a great deal of things, but why do you care so much and why do think anybody else cares so much to put so much effort into discussing it?

and their marketing department told them "get as far from 7 and 8 as possible. We need to make 7 look old and obsolete, or nobody will upgrade. And you already know why we need to put extra space between 8 and the next version."

Really? Or are you just postulating so you marketing drones have something to discuss?

In effect, this is confirming what many people think. Windows 7 is the new Windows XP - it's going to be hard to get people to make the upgrade, because it already does what they want, and the next version (Windows 8 in the case of Windows 7, and Vista in the case of XP) really sucked^Wfailed to meet user expectations. In both cases, the previous version got heavily entrenched and became almost impossible to move from.

Or more likely they've already got a well known series of "Windows 9x" so calling this one Windows 9 is just going to be confusing. Even if it were as you say, what of it? I'm still trying to work out if you have a point that is of any consequence to anybody or you're just rabbiting on because you just love marketing.

Re:Skipping a version number

[dbIII]

You forgot Vista. I wish I could.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Barsteward]

I think you need to get double Microsoft Nerd Points for knowing/remembering all that

Re:Skipping a version number

[TrollingForHostFiles]

Funny that you can't seem to remember this, you mean?

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just speculation, as you probably don't have access to the source code.

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how hosts make "new stuff" adblock look old n' busted here though http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange then that he shut you all up here BarbaraHudson http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

Re:Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you were unable to prove apk's points on hosts wrong too http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re: Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

Better speak to BarbaraHudson (or should I say TomHudson rather) considering he/she's a "TrAnStEsTiCuLaR-MoNsTeR" I'd say he/she's a faggot (or was until 'certain changes', lol, took place. Rather unnatural ones proven to adversely affect a male brain attempting to be female using doses of female estrogen in some pitiful doomed to fail attempt to be female).

Re:Skipping a version number

[godefroi]

That article claims that Windows 9 will be announced on Sept 30. So much for that, then, right?

Re: Skipping a version number

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it a surprise Windows 9 disappeared?

Obviously Seven ate Nine.

Re:Skipping a version number

[SJHillman]

What part is speculation? The internal version number isn't exactly a secret. Open up a commandline and type "ver". There's a lot of other things about Windows that are well known whether or not you have the source.

Re:Skipping a version number

[SJHillman]

I had to look up some of it, but knowing the internal version number can be seriously helpful if you're writing a script that needs to do different things depending on what version of Windows it's running on (such as looking for "C:\Users\Public\Public Desktop\" vs "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop\", as a simple example). Getting that version number from the command line is as easy as "ver"

Re:Skipping a version number

[soundman32]

Don't let Raymond hear you look up paths this way.

I hope your script doesn't run on a corporate network where they remap those paths! There is a proper API to look up these directories (and has been since Win98 or so). 

Need to see how to get in the Windows Insider Prog

[WilliamGeorge]

Yes, I'm sort of a MS fanboy (less so that I was years ago, but still). Flame me all you want. Sounds like this could be a cool update :)

Better call it Windows 11

[jkrise]

Everyone knows the even number versions suck.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[synapse7]

Maybe they are letting you know something.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Win98? 2002? those were both good

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[plebeian]

Everyone knows the even number versions suck.

You forget windows 2000. When compared to the alternatives at the time it was a kick a$$ operating system.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[jfdavis668]

This one goes to 11, it's one louder

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[scm]

Wasn't Windows 2000 technically version 5.0? IIRC that's the version number it reported. Also IIRC, XP was 5.1, Vista was 6.0.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[jd2112]

Everyone knows the even number versions suck.

I was hoping for a Spinal Tap reference...

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a new one, thought of that all by yourself???

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[jfdavis668]

Windows 7 is 6.1. Go figure.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

News at 11.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Atrox666]

NT 3.51 - blech
NT4 - Not bad

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Megol]

And? The reason for the existence of an internal version number is for internal use - it doesn't signify the extent of changes between versions.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[MTEK]

Right-on! No self-respecting geek would install that Windows ME shit.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing windows version with IIS

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[VorpalRodent]

It's the alphanumeric ones that suck.

I'm holding out for Windows !

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Could end up with WINDOWS !) if they're in a big rush to get it packaged.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. A different AC posted this:

You're confusing windows version with IIS

Some IIS versions were indeed coincident with contemporary OS versions. However, you've identified some of the actual OS versions as reported by the (recently deprecated) Windows API GetVersionEx() function. The relevant version numbers for the WinNT family are listed in the MSDN documentation for the OSVERSIONINFOEX structure. At the time of this post, that list goes back to Win2000, which is version 5.0. Older WinNT versions and Win9x versions can be found in older MSDN documentation.

- T

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the Microsoft devs are pronouncing this one as "Windows Two," this is an even release that is going to suck.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

I found it hilarious how many of my coworkers here at Microsoft were confused as to why so many people here correctly say 10 as two. This is a very sad place technically.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

oh how cute you took a meme and made it all your own with total bullshit, reward this man

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[ConceptJunkie]

NT 3.51 was one of the most stable OSes I've ever used, if not the most stable. NT 4 was still pretty good, minus the even number service packs. Windows 2000 was excellent, minus Explorer, which for me usually crashed within an hour of a fresh install. I always liked XP once you turned on the Playskool theme. Nothing since XP has impressed me. Just more bloat, and more effort to get it to look and act like it used to.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[steelfood]

I believe the order goes: pre-95 (good), 95 (suck), NT4 (good), 98 (suck), 2000 (good), ME (suck), XP (good), Vista (suck), 7 (good).

Windows versions pre-95 were all good because DOS did all the sucking.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't Windows 2000 technically version 5.0? IIRC that's the version number it reported. Also IIRC, XP was 5.1, Vista was 6.0.

Yes. The real rule is that the x.1 versions of Windows are the good ones:

Windows 3.1 (fixed most of the horrible bugs in 3.0)
Windows 98 (actually Windows 4.1)
Windows XP (NT 5.1)
Windows 7 (NT 6.1)

Apparently MS's new versioning scheme means there will never be a major version number higher than 6, which implies there will never be another x.1 release of Windows. Whether this means there will never again be a *good* release of Windows remains to be seen, although so far the correlation's holding quite well...

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows the even number versions suck.

You forget windows 2000. When compared to the alternatives at the time it was a kick a$$ operating system.

Windows 2000 was a major disappointment. MS had promised a large number of important new features (including multiple user sessions & remote desktop access), most of which got pushed back into XP, which was a major improvement and only released 19 months later. The only real advantage it had over NT4 was support for USB devices.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[dbIII]

It nerfed the file sharing of NT4 to only a few connections and make workgroups useless, forcing us back to a central server model - preferably one with SAMBA instead of an arbitrary connection limit.
That loss of a feature is actually what pushed my workplace from NT4 + Hummingbird Exceed to linux desktops nearly everywhere. If MS Windows machines can't talk to MS Windows machines effectively and that's the only reason you are on the platform then why stay on it?

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

98SE was the only good one of the 9x series. Windows 2000 took SIX service packs to barely fix, and even then needed to be reinstalled twice a year.

NT4 Workstation felt like a crashy pile of junk that needed to be rebooted all the time - and I came from Windows 95 even.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[AmiMoJo]

The last one to have a boot up tune as well. After that they switched to a simple sound effect instead of music.

I kinda miss those tunes. They were a nice little celebration that the computer didn't crash on boot. If they stuttered you knew your PC sucked and couldn't multi-task. The only flaw was that there was usually a few more minutes of loading start-up apps after they finished before the OS was really ready to use.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows the even number versions suck.

From now on there will be no odd numbered versions. This is just Microsoft shoving it back into the face of customers who say this, kinda like how they put the Start button back in 8.1 but it still went to the metro screen.

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

When compared to the alternatives today, it's still a 'kick a$$ operating system'

(I'd love to have Win2k with XP's library and kernel updates...)

(I'm still running it, despite it being four years out of security support. Sigh.)

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Six service packs? W2k only had four, plus one update roll-up. Are you thinking of an earlier NT?

Re:Better call it Windows 11

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the alphanumeric ones that suck.

I'm holding out for Windows !

Wait a few years after that and you can get Windows !$%*@

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

"These go to eleven."

Windows OS X

[glennrrr]

Sounds familiar.

Re:Windows OS X

[kthreadd]

Well, there was a Mac OS 9. They just happened to stay at 10.

Re:Windows OS X

[WillAffleckUW]

next version is Win XX and then Win XXX, the Vin Diesel version.

Re:Windows OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple was planning to skip Mac OS 9 but they couldn't get Mac OS X finished soon enough. Ancient history no one remembers. Mac OS 8 was before the iPod, Apple hadn't become Hipster's Choice yet, Mac OS didn't have a cult following of Unix connoisseurs, and Macs were used solely by losers.

Re:Windows OS X

[Art3x]

Sounds familiar.

Yes, they should use the Roman numeral and call this Windows X. Apple did it, and it was cool. Then they could call their next version Windows 10 Plus, or for short, Windows XP. Businesses will jump right on that one.

Re:Windows OS X

[kthreadd]

They also planned to have release ready every six months. It's wasn't called Mac OS 9 at first, they used code names like Sonata.

Re:Windows OS X

[markdavis]

Exactly. And I have to point out to people all the time that it is, in fact, Apple MacOS 10 (ten) not "ecks". It is so stupid and redundant when I hear/see something like "OS X version 10.3"... it is not "Operating system version 10 version 10.3" it is really just MacOS 10.3.

Apple has marketed their stupid version number into something they can not and will never change now. There will probably never be a "MacOS XI" and "MacOS X version 11" makes no sense.

Re:Windows OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

They can always use Chinese numerals and call it Windows +. On the other hand, next version will be Windows +-.

Re:Windows OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Roman fucking numerals?? Well, at least that explains what happened to OS Y.

we are DOOOMED!!!

[ganjadude]

based on previous rollouts, we are doomed. xp - good, vista - garbage. 7 good- 8 garbage. if we are skipping 9 (which historically would be the good release) and go to 10 will be a disaster! Someone needs to tell MS that users skip a generation of windows, not them!

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[nine-times]

Nah, it's fine. Every other release is garbage, not every odd number. How would you possibly try to figure out Microsoft's numbering, anyway? Their version numbers go from 3 to 95, jumps to 98, 2000, then goes to the lettering, ME and XP (are those roman numerals?). Then in goes to Vista. Now, lets be fair. 95 and 98 are the years, so let's just count. So 95 is version 4, 98 is version 5, 2000 is version 6, ME is version 8, XP is version 9, and Vista is version 10. So next comes 11, right? Nope, version 7.

Ok, but some of those were professional builds, right? So let's just start from NT v4 and count major NT releases. 2000 is version 5, XP is version 6, Vista is version 7, and... wait.

Wait, wait, I know, let's look at Microsoft's internal versioning numbers. NTv4 is version 4, 2000 is version 5, XP is version 5.1, Vista is version 6. Ok this is making sense, because next version after vista (v6) should be 7, right? Nope, Windows 7's internal version number is v6.1. Windows 8 is version 6.2. WTF?

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the simple problem of correlation vs causation. You also find it a lot in the AGW crowd.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[chuckugly]

Engineering, meet marketing.

The internal version numbers are completely sensible, the marketing names are dreamed up by marketing people, what did you expect, logic?

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I still like the Windows version that rolls CE technology, ME technology and NT technology into one. Together they are stronger, right?

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[mythosaz]

ME and XP (are those roman numerals?).

P was used in the middle ages for 400, and E for 250, so..

1250 and 390, I guess.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Ravaldy]

Many changes in marketing direction. Many companies back in the day adopted years for their software and eventually went to release names and finally went back to basics which is version number. Behind the scenes the number continued to increase as version numbers went up. E.g. Vista was the save version number as Windows 2008 and Windows 7 was same version as Windows 2008 R2.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter. The product's ability to deliver what is was built for is what matters and their PC sales prove they appeals to 90% of the population.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[jfdavis668]

I'm going to sing the doom song now...

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[cnaumann]

You forgot Bob.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The version identifiers seem pretty reasonable from a design perspective:

--Windows 3//3.1/3.11 - not a whole lot of difference, right? Mostly stability and compatability
--Windows NT4 to Windows 2000 (Ver 4 to Ver 5) was a fairly straightforward step turning the workstation into a personal computer OS.
--Windows XP is basically only a small step up in compatability and stability from Win2K, so +0.1 to ver.
--Windows Vista was a pretty huge change, internally, from XP, so 5.1 to 6 is reasonable.
--Windows 7 wasn't really a step up from Vista, but a step down, sort of, in the sense that the core was streamlined, so I get a step from 6 to 6.1
--Windows 8 wasn't a huge change from Win7, as far as usability goes, I see no difference except for the change from the Start Menu to the Start Screen (Metro interface), but outside of metro, it's not a whole lot different. Most of the config options in Control Panel didn't really change except for the design of the interface, so while I *could* understand a whole-version increment, I can *also* understand only a +0.1 increment. This change is probably the only one that should be controversial, but ymmv.

I quite enjoy Windows 8.1. After a brief learning curve to deal with interface changes, I find it to be as usable as Win7, and so far nothing about it annoys me.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

...then goes to the lettering, ME and XP (are those roman numerals?)

Nope, Greek, not Roman: XP = Chi-Rho ("Cairo"). Or so I've read.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[I'm New Around Here]

At the end of the day it doesn't matter. The product's ability to deliver what is was built for is what matters and their PC sales prove they appeals to 90% of the population.

Faulty logic. Your assumption would mean that chains and whips appealed to 90% of slaves.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[gstoddart]

based on previous rollouts, we are doomed. xp - good, vista - garbage

You know, vista wasn't terrible if you threw enough resources at it.

I've been running it on a quad-core machine with 8GB of RAM since 2009. It's my daily desktop.

And I can honestly say I've been quite happy with it. Which, I know isn't something you hear every day. :-P

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like someone that is kinda into computers, but really doesn't understand what's under the hood...

The 4,5,5.1,6, etc is the version number of the kernal

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, 8/8.1 is fine. It's the interface that's garbage. Use a start menu replacement program and the OS is smooth as silk.

You're just jumping on the hate train with everyone else. You're the one that's garbage.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

7 was also garbage. Worst OS I have ever used.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Eristone]

Slaves weren't their intended customers. Chains and whips appealed to 90% of slave owners. (Keep this in mind when you consider Facebook and end users aren't the intended customers....) :)

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

7 appears to be based on 95 being version 1.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[ArcadeMan]

It doesn't add up. Fruit - good. Cake - great. Fruitcake - nasty crap.
Jim Gaffigan

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[houghi]

As if those release names only are there for marketing ...
Oh wait, they are. They could call it "Windows New" for all I care. The names mean nothing. They just figured that they could sell more by naming it with a higher number than the previous one. If tbhey thought they would sell more by using something else, they would use that.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah yeah. And there are a lot of people that are quite happy getting fucked in the ass, so much so that their buttholes whistle when they walk. I prefer to keep my asshole nice in tight. If you took that same pile of megahardware and put 7 on it, it would fly but hey, settle for mediocrity if you want.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[nine-times]

A few people responded to me as though I thought I'd leveled from amazing criticism of Microsoft. I'm just pointing out that you can't make anything out of Microsoft's version numbers. But that's kind of true in general, regarding version numbers. They don't necessarily mean anything. Some developers actually use them to mean something, while others seem to increase them at completely arbitrary intervals.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it's fine. Every other release is garbage, not every odd number. How would you possibly try to figure out Microsoft's numbering, anyway? Their version numbers go from 3 to 95, jumps to 98, 2000, then goes to the lettering, ME and XP (are those roman numerals?). Then in goes to Vista. Now, lets be fair. 95 and 98 are the years, so let's just count. So 95 is version 4, 98 is version 5, 2000 is version 6, ME is version 8, XP is version 9, and Vista is version 10. So next comes 11, right? Nope, version 7.

Ok, but some of those were professional builds, right? So let's just start from NT v4 and count major NT releases. 2000 is version 5, XP is version 6, Vista is version 7, and... wait.

Wait, wait, I know, let's look at Microsoft's internal versioning numbers. NTv4 is version 4, 2000 is version 5, XP is version 5.1, Vista is version 6. Ok this is making sense, because next version after vista (v6) should be 7, right? Nope, Windows 7's internal version number is v6.1. Windows 8 is version 6.2. WTF?

Umm, so off and so wrong, its crazy.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions
As well look at the Linux kernel, 2.4 was stable 2.5 was test.. then 2.6,(ie 2.6.2, 2.6.48) then 3.0 which now counts 3.1,3.2 and I believe 3.16 is landing, and the Open Mandriva I just installed was kernel 3.15.10.

Apple is releasing OS X version 10 (Which if you counted up from OS9 would be OS10 v10) and why did they switch from cats? I wanted OS X 10 Tabby

Numbering never makes sense, its arbitrary on whims of the developers.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[mrprogrammerman]

Whoosh!

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait till the take the Mac/Ubuntu/Linux version approach with those crazy-ass names.

Mac:
Was 10.6 Leopard, Snow-Leopard, Lion or some other cat, ah fuck it I'll just search by number.

Ubuntu:
I use this OS way more than Mac OS-X and I don't even know what the fuck 12.04 is called other than something stupid and stupid-sounding.

Android:
Why are they named after candy?

The MS numbering method may not make some sense but they 'thankfully' haven't gone that insane yet

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[chuckugly]

I was just agreeing with you, and pointing out that the numbers on the box are not version numbers, they are marketing labels.

Re:we are DOOOMED!!!

[ganjadude]

woooosh

Having said that I agree with you. I am running a win 8 machine with a stardock start button replacement and it is pretty damn good.

Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have called it Windows X.

Re: Missed opportunity

[VTBlue]

The coolest things have X:

OS X
Windows X
Xbox
Malcolm X
Mega Man X
X-wing ...
Xylophone

Re: Missed opportunity

[Spy Handler]

X-Men and X-Com blow away all of those in coolness. And fun.

Re:Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

They should call it "X windows X", that way it will appeal to both the techie Linux crowd and the hipster Mac crowd.
According to the same logic Microsoft seems to apply to their product itself anyway.

Re:Missed opportunity

[Eristone]

Can't call it Windows X - too easily confused with X Windows.

Re:Missed opportunity

[__aaclcg7560]

Looking forward to all the naughty bits in WinXXX when it comes out.

Re:Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't XWindow on linux and unix?

Re:Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently X Window is too easily confused with "X Windows".

Re: Missed opportunity

[rodrigoandrade]

But coolest things have 3 X's.

Re:Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

> X Windows

I don't think that means what you think it means ...

Re: Missed opportunity

[Calydor]

No, those are the hottest things, not the coolest.

Re: Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you didn't see xXx staring Vin Diesel.

Re:Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as X Windows. I think you are talking about the X Window System or X11.

Re: Missed opportunity

[Richy_T]

Or gone hex: Widows A

Or maybe Windows 0x0A

Re: Missed opportunity

[Richy_T]

Or, (can't believe I missed this) Windows 0Ah

Abbreviated as "W0Ah" and endorsed by Keanu Reeves

Re:Missed opportunity

[Solandri]

Can't call it Windows X - too easily confused with X Windows.

No confusion at all.

Win X
Is
Not
X Windows
= Win X

Hey it works for a bunch of other FOSS projects.

Re: Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the Amsterdam Coat of Arms, for example.

Re: Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X

Am I the only person who actually pronounces that as "OS ten" instead of "OS ecks"?!

Everyone else in my workplace uses the latter- even the resident Apple fanboy- and I'm probably the one that has the *least* to do with Macs, but I can't bring myself to say it. Even if I'm not too keen on coming across like I'm making a point or standing out, I can't f*****g bring myself to say "ecks", when it's bleeding obviously meant to be "ten".

(And, yeah, "OS ten" *is* the official pronounciation, apparently, it just surprises me that it's called "ecks" so often.)

Re: Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot X-rated.

Re:Missed opportunity

[sound vision]

They might be trying to X-tinguish (embrace, x-tend, )

Re: Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the movie xXx.

Re:Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Research showed that operating systems with the letter X are more popular.

Windows X-treme!

Re:Missed opportunity

[gbjbaanb]

They tried to call it Windows One, but someone noticed they'd already released that version, so it got changed to "Windows One Nothing", or Windows 10 as written in the short form.

Re: Missed opportunity

[RightwingNutjob]

And don't forget X11. Wayland-tards' complaints bitching and moaning notwithstanding.

Re: Missed opportunity

[Snufu]

I'm too Xy for this post.

Re: Missed opportunity

[edxwelch]

except X-Wife

Re: Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

X-rays

Re: Missed opportunity

[FrankSchwab]

Oh, that's funny right there. Wish I had some mod points for you - I think I'm going to start using that name.

"Hey, when are we planning on upgrading to...Woah?"

Re: Missed opportunity

[naddington]

Dogg did you really forget X11?

Re: Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

i believe the one microsoft is thinking of is....

eXortion

Re: Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd operate my system with that.

Re: Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, did you not read the list? It says X-wing!

Re: Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

you forgot seX

Re: Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Did someone say 3? Around the tenth anniversary of Half Life 2?

Re:Missed opportunity

[kammermusik]

Reminds me of the confusion in OpenOffice.org XML/OpenDocument vs. Office Open XML

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused, to they refer to this kind of Tesla : http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2013/10/tesla-model-s-fire.jpg?

April fools!

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth stranger than fiction...

Re:April fools!

[Anonymous Coward]

And this time the supposedly implausble story was not from The Onion. Remember Gillette skipping the four-bladed razor to go straight to 5?

Re:April fools!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are no comments on that page dated before today?

Re:April fools!

[esperto]

If I'm the guy who wrote this article I would just run and dump my savings in Vegas.

Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't Windows 9 meant to be the good one since Windows 8 was shit? Are they naming it 10 because they know it will be a flop?

Bad choice due to superstition.

[meerling]

People believe in the trend that even numbered Windows OS versions suck.
Going straight to 10 is not a good move.
Somehow I'm not surprised. :P

That feature has been in windows since XP

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using JS Pager Virtual Desktop since the 1990's. It has all the features described here, and still works in Windows 7, even though it hasn't been updated since 2000.

Re:That feature has been in windows since XP

[Anonymous Coward]

And now there's a UI for it.

Re:That feature has been in windows since XP

[ShaunC]

It's not really a feature of Windows if you have to use a third-party utility, is it? That's like saying Napster has been a feature of Windows since 2000.

Re-Sizable Tiles?

[TechyImmigrant]

Is a re-sizable tile like a window?

Re:Re-Sizable Tiles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but more opaque.

Re:Re-Sizable Tiles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a re-sizable tile like a window?

Resizable tiles are called doors.

Re:Re-Sizable Tiles?

[TechyImmigrant]

So they're stuck to the bottom of the screen?

Can they be ajar?

Re:Re-Sizable Tiles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet, but for windows 11 we plan to add minimize/maximize buttons to the each metro window corner. Further unification will allow metro apps to look exactly like native desktop application - in fact metro apps will be able to call Win32/GDI API. This will render metro API obsolete and will be removed from Windows 12. However to allow this removal it hast to be completed first so please be patient - all this is planed for Windows 13 (codename Guantanamo), release about Ramadan (we are not sure about the year though).

Satya Nadella

Re:Re-Sizable Tiles?

[Anonymous Coward]

no silly, they're menus, not jars!

Re:Re-Sizable Tiles?

[NormalVisual]

Can they be ajar?

If they're written in Java, maybe.

Re:Re-Sizable Tiles?

[TechyImmigrant]

But jar jars blink.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[kthreadd]

Look at it from the bright side, at least it wasn't called Windows One.

Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to Win

[neilo_1701D]

From InfoWorld, April 1, 2013:

If you've been looking forward to Windows 9, the OS that will fix what Windows 8 got wrong, you're in for a surprise: There will be no Windows 9. Instead, Microsoft announced it will proceed directly to Windows 10.

"The Windows 9 internal beta was a phenomenal success," said Microsoft PR rep Cheryl Tunt. "I mean, it blew Windows 8 out of the water, and as we all know, Windows 8 is nigh flawless. After discussion at the C level, Microsoft has decided it will not mess with success and will leave Windows 9 exactly as it is. As such, work is now getting under way on Windows 10, which should see a public release."

http://www.infoworld.com/artic...

No 9?

[Retron]

When I was a kid I remember reading that in Japanese, "4" sounded like death and "9" sounded like suffering. A quick bit of Googling 25 years on and:

"[In Japanese] Nine is also sometimes pronounced ku, which can mean suffering."

I'm guessing they skipped Windows 9 because they didn't want it to sound like "Windows Suffering" in parts of the world!

Re:No 9?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Nine is pronounced like the German "Windows Nein", which means Windows No.

Re:No 9?

[jfdavis668]

Scared off by Yoko Ono?

Re:No 9?

[argStyopa]

Because the mantra of a good storyteller is "show, don't tell"?

Re:No 9?

[suutar]

This (and the AC's mention of German) makes more sense than anything else I've heard :)

Re:No 9?

[baka_toroi]

Windows 7 is "uindouzu sebun" (seven) in Japanese, and not "nana" or "shichi." Same goes for 8 (eito instead of "hachi"), So 9 would've been "uindouzu nain" and not "ku."

Re:No 9?

[Chris Mattern]

Well, there you go. They didn't want to offend the *other* Axis nation by making "Windows Nein".

Re:No 9?

[RyoShin]

Claim: The Chevrolet Nova sold poorly in Spanish-speaking countries because its name translates as "doesn't go" in Spanish. Excerpts:

Although "no va" can be literally translated as "no go," it would be a curious locution for a speaker of Spanish to use in reference to a car. Just as an English speaker would describe a broken-down car by saying that it "doesn't run" rather than it "doesn't go," so a Spanish speaker would refer to a malfunctioning automobile by saying "no marcha" or "no funciona" or "no camina" rather than "no va."
--
The truth is that the Chevrolet Nova's name didn't significantly affect its sales: it sold well in both its primary Spanish-language markets, Mexico and Venezuela. (Its Venezuelan sales figures actually surpassed GM's expectations.)

While my Japanese is only kawaii-desu-ne, I would be surprised if "Win(dows) 9" would really be that much of a problem. If they just called it "9", perhaps that might cause the allusion...

Also consider the Nintendo Wii. Yeah, there were people making fun of the name left and right (even I, a long-time fan of Nintendo, thought the name was stupid), but after it sold like hotcakes the jokes retreated and are only used by other gamer camps now. (But Wii U is still a stupid name.)

Re:No 9?

[multimediavt]

I'm guessing they skipped Windows 9 because they didn't want it to sound like "Windows Suffering" in parts of the world!

Yeah, because just running it at all isn't causing suffering all over the world?

Re: No 9?

[Anonymous Coward]

...or like the German, "Windows neun", which means, well, Windows Nine.

Re:No 9?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's...cute. You think Microsoft gives more consideration to international markets beyond "make them buy our stuff."

I can pretty much guarantee you that "Windows 10" was a name that came out of the mouth of hell itself in the business world, the focus group. "Oh, if we just call it Windows 9 people are going to think of it as a patch-up job of Windows 8...which is what it actually is, but that's beside the point. We need buzz, we need the word of mouth to be 'buy Microsoft' instead of 'fuck Microsoft,' and...oh yeah, look at that. We need sales too."

At this point Windows is only the most popular OS on earth for two reasons, that I can see. One, Apple's hardware is overpriced. Two, Linux and the other alternative OS' out there haven't gotten far along enough yet to keep the majority of people satisfied. If Microsoft came out with a version of Windows that did away with the grain-alcohol-infused tiles of Windows 8, with the stability and consistency of (a patched) Windows 2000, it'd fly off the shelves...but I think we all know that's not what they're going to do, is it? Just because Baldmer has been ousted doesn't mean that Nutella is going to be any better at the helm. People like to hate on Bill Gates but at least he knew how to sell fucking software, which is kind of what Microsoft is supposed to be doing.

And the captcha word of the day; extort. No kidding.

Re:No 9?

[PPH]

Windows Suffering

That was Windows 8.

Re:No 9?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

The truth is that the Chevrolet Nova's name didn't significantly affect its sales: it sold well in both its primary Spanish-language markets, Mexico and Venezuela. (Its Venezuelan sales figures actually surpassed GM's expectations.)

The Nova didn't sell well, because it wasn't a particularly good car. There were many times it DID'T run, didn't need a name to attach that condition to the car.

I wish i could attribute properly, but someone explained the Nova somewhat as "a person hearing a furniture set had notable workmanship, but ignoring it because it had no table" It puts spanish speakers in a bad light, claiming they can't tell the difference between languages.

That said, I think Alfa Romeo DID rename the 144 to the 148, for bad sounds in Cantonese. But they didn't do a Before and After rename sales comparison, so we'll never know if it can affect sales.

Re:No 9?

[dafradu]

And ku in portuguese has the same sound of cu, the ass****.

Re:No 9?

[GbrDead]

And .NET in Russian means .NO but that didn't stop them.

Re:No 9?

[AmiMoJo]

Indeed, 9 does not seem to be a problem in Japan. I used to play a lot of A-Train 9, for example. It's not like 4 where manufacturers will always skip it. My Panasonic TV came out the year after the 3 series, but it's a 5 series because they skipped over 4.

I wonder if it's because of China. 9 seems to be unlucky there too. I think the ku reading is the Chinese reading. There are buildings in Hong Kong with no 4th, 9th or 13th floors.

Re:No 9?

[baka_toroi]

Yup, it's the Chinese reading. I don't know much Chinese but it seems 4 is also a homonym with death (si4 if I'm not mistaken).
Also, the reading for death in Japanese (shi) came from Chinese, it's the on-yomi. So yeah, it's more of a China thing.

X windows or X11

[Anonymous Coward]

wait they are taken

Re:OMFG, stupid

[viperidaenz]

Perhaps he means you can over 500 miles to a tank on a Prius and only 265 in a Tesla model S

windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

clearly they are just using a base 9 numbering system like the rest of us should do too.

there are 10 types of people in the world -- those who count in binary and those who don't

I thought this was satire

[Quick Reply]

And then I realised we are nowhere near April 1. Maybe '10' is going back to year designations... Hang on that was 4 years ago. I can't help but to think that when they pull things like this (eg: 'ME') it is inevitably going to end in disaster, except this time they some actual competition from Google and Apple in the mobile space (which is on the verge of taking over the desktop)

Re:I thought this was satire

[Qzukk]

Could be worse, they could have named it Windows One.

Re:I thought this was satire

[Anonymous Coward]

They have, it depends on the endianness of the reader.

Re:I thought this was satire

[I'm New Around Here]

Oh great! My Slashdot has been invaded by little-endians. Surely no big-endian would have made such a post.

Re:I thought this was satire

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm x86 compatible, and you?

Re:I thought this was satire

[Megane]

But we are next to October 1, the day opposite April 1. Last year's October Fool's was Slashdot Beta (one year anniversary tomorrow!) This year's October Fool's is brought to you by Microsoft.

Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Already lots of screenshots available.

There are 10 kinds of people. Those who know binary and those who don't.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

I've 10 - 1 - 1 copies of windows 9.

Re:Screenshots

[NotInHere]

There are 0 kinds of people: Those who understand F_2 and those who don't.

Windows 10, huh?

[ErichTheRed]

I guess they want version parity with MacOS? Or they want to put it in people's minds that this version of Windows is so much better than 8, they had to skip a version number.

I just hope they listen to user feedback this time about the UI. If the Start menu is back, that's a good sign. I know a lot of people say it's a throwback, but the Metrofication of the familiar desktop was what caused our group to skip Windows 8 for inclusion in our product. (We provide a managed IT service to a very staid, boring industry that actively resists change.) I really really REALLY want Aero Glass or something like it back in the OS, or at least theming support that would allow a third party hack. Windows 8.1 Update 1 was pretty decent in terms of UI cleanup, and I hope they continue. Maybe they'll answer my other wish and fix the Office UI...having a background choice of white, bright white and insanely bright white is a killer on any screen larger than a tablet.

We'll see if they learned their lesson with Windows 8. Hopefully by the time the release rolls around, the tablet/social/mobile bubble will have at least deflated a little, and people might be back down on Earth wanting to do actual work on a laptop or desktop. Windows 8 and Server 2012 R2 are actually really nice under the hood, and excellent upgrades to Windows 7 -- but they're hobbled by a clunky UI that I've only recently come to terms with.

Re:Windows 10, huh?

[langelgjm]

Too bad they didn't notice OS X is currently at 10.9...

Also, isn't the rule of thumb that it's every other version of Windows that's the good one? By skipping 9, are skipping straight to another bad one?

Re:Windows 10, huh?

[Megane]

Yep, time for Apple to go to eleven. And as we all know, that's one louder than ten.

Re:Need to see how to get in the Windows Insider P

[Aighearach]

Don't let them bring you down, I'm sure this is finally the update where windows is ready for the desktop. What do you have without your dreams?

Everything makes sense now!

[xepel]

I used to think that Microsoft's problems were due to leadership issues and completely ignoring their userbase's wants and needs...

But no! Really, the problem is that they've been coding everything in base 9!

Now that Windows has reached version 10

[JoeyRox]

We can do a proper ten-point countdown to complete irrelevance.

Re:Now that Windows has reached version 10

[FatLittleMonkey]

Ten!

Eight!

Seven!

Vista!

XP!

2000!

ME!

98!

95!

3.11

3

2

1

DOS!

We have DOS of the Microsoft operating system. The processor is at 16 bit, and 86-DOS has cloned the CP/M.

Upgrade cycle

[dysmal]

Way to screw up our upgrade cycle here guys!!!

Huh?

[LVSlushdat]

So let me get this straight.. what WAS going to be "Windows 9" is NOW "Windows 10"???? Idiot-central up there in Redmond.. Sooooo GLAD I retired from supporting MS's crap a few years ago.. Now I use Linux and damn glad about THAT!

Re:Huh?

[SternisheFan]

So let me get this straight.. what WAS going to be "Windows 9" is NOW "Windows 10"????

Seven Eight Nine.

Integers have self-respect too

[Anonymous Coward]

Rumor has it that nine continued to stonewall plans to have it represent the successor to Windows 8, making itself "unavailable" for planning meetings and frequently attending out-of-state math conferences.

Eventually, things came to a head, and nine received a generous severance package in return for a non-disclosure agreement regarding any discussion of Windows release plans with ten.

Microsoft Math

[dysmal]

This reminds me of something my first boss told me: "Microsoft can't tell time. Have you ever seen how it counts down 3 minutes... 2 minutes... 7 minutes... 2 minutes... 1 minute...? They can't tell time!"

Re: Microsoft Math

[Anonymous Coward]

obligatory

http://xkcd.com/612/

Re:Microsoft Math

[jarlsberg71]

I've heard them referred to as "Winutes" If you brand your own time, you can never be wrong!

Will the "search" feature work again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 searching worked very well. Windows 8 broke it and it is now worthless. Will they fix it? Again?

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[Anonymous Coward]

"and as we all know, Windows 8 is nigh flawless."

As far as jokes go, that's really tasteless.

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[cptdondo]

Translation:

It's such a screwed up mess that we don't know how to deal with it, so instead we're going to pull some marketing razzle dazzle and hope like hell people forget the mess we made.

But the real question is this:

If every other release sucks, and windows 8 sucked, and windows 9 is so good that it can't even be released, does that mean that Windows 10 will suck?

yes, more unification !

[Anonymous Coward]

because we all know that to make the ultimate porn movie you just mix parts of all fetishes and perversions that exist, and then all perverts will be extremely satisfied by your ultimate porn movie.

Re:yes, more unification !

[Zynder]

I'm going to need a link to, ummm, validate this theory....

Re:OMFG, stupid

[sabri]

nice car analogy, moron

How about you look at the difference in luxury and space? I'm no MS fan in any way but your comment is a bit over the top.

Did Firefox buy Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently Firefox's deal with Google was so lucrative, they now have enough money to buy Microsoft.

I'm holding out for Windows 29, scheduled to be out next week.

screw the windows interface team

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does microsoft want to make their desktop interface into a media center interface....

People can't do their work like that..
they really need to stop .. because they are screwing up bad

Re:screw the windows interface team

[Opportunist]

No, they're actually doing what they have to do. There is no serious competition in the business market, but there is MacOS in the consumer market. Why would MS care that you can't do your work as long as they have something to compete with "ohhh shiny!"

Re:screw the windows interface team

[exomondo]

Seriously how is this impeding you from doing your work? Like a genuine example rather than a contrived, intentionally obtuse one. None of my applications work any differently on Windows 8 than they did in Windows 7. If you can't manage without the start menu then obviously OS X (not having a start menu) is not competition they would need to worry about.

At This Rate

[NEDHead]

How long before I can reinstall Windows 95 and be up to date?

Re:At This Rate

[jfdavis668]

I was thinking of going back to Windows 2.11. Screw this Internet crap.

Re:At This Rate

[jd2112]

How long before I can reinstall Windows 95 and be up to date?

About 7 years and a few months. It appears that Microsoft is adopting the Chrome/Firefox versioning system. Version number will be increased by 1 on every patch Tuesday.

Re:At This Rate

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Back to horse drawn pen and paper.

(Mod me Redundant)

Re:At This Rate

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have copy of windows 1.0, the safest do nothing version ever!
It's nothing like the newer Win8 versions,..
Oh' wait... it had tiled apps that sucked too!
Could it be that Win8 was just a renamed Win1.0 ?

Re:At This Rate

[Anonymous Coward]

You are already ahead the next version. Microsoft has obviously gone binary with their version numbers.

Re:At This Rate

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you count in binary Windows 10 *is* Windows 2... :-)

Wait, what?

[gstoddart]

So, most people still prefer Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 is only slowly getting market share and people apparently don't like it much, Windows 9 is supposed to come out this fall ... and somehow we're also expecting a Windows 10 next year?

Does Microsoft think people will pay them annually for an upgrade? Or that we'll buy new machines to run this new thing?? They might be sorely disappointed with that.

With the new version of the operating system, they'll be unifying the application platform for all devices: desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones

Hmmm ... so they're going to have one big enormous bloated build for all platforms? Is that what this means?

Right, because your phone should carry all of the bloat which goes along with a server.

And, once again, one wonders if Microsoft really has any understanding of the mobile market.

Unless your phone has the same specs as your desktop, this isn't really going to be workable, is it?

I commend them for finally adding virtual desktops ... a feature they've only occasionally realized people actually want, but the rest of this just makes me think they've lost the plot a little.

Re:Wait, what?

[squiggleslash]

They're not releasing "Windows 9" this year. They're renaming Windows 9 to Windows 10, and releasing that next year.

Re:Wait, what?

[jones_supa]

Now that was some classic anti-Microsoft-rage.

Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[erp_consultant]

That's what Windows 10 looks like to me - a Camel. Mixing "traditional" apps with "Metro" tiles looks ridiculous. Why can't MS just leave Windows 8 behind? It was an experiment and it failed - massively. Yet they are still stubbornly handing on to "tiles" and such.

On the bright side...

1) Nice to see the Start Menu back...if only they could drop those stupid tiles.
2) Multiple desktops is nice. Been using it on OSX and Linux forever. From what I can tell the functionality seems a bit limited in Windows 10 but it's a start.

I've been using Windows 8 for about a year now on my home PC and, metro interface aside, it's great. Very stable, requires little in the way of resources. It looks awful but runs well. That's what Microsoft should be taking away from this. The guts of the system are fine. Fix the interface.

What I'd like to see is something similar to Linux where you can choose the interface you want (Mint, KDE, etc.) from the login screen and it just loads it up. So if you're running a desktop with a big screen you get something that looks a lot like Windows 7. If it's a table or phone, give 'em tiles.

This "one size fits all" approach is just an abomination.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[neilo_1701D]

2) Multiple desktops is nice. Been using it on OSX and Linux forever. From what I can tell the functionality seems a bit limited in Windows 10 but it's a start.

Windows, since XP, has had this ability. You needed a SysInternals tool to enable it. But, finally, a welcome addition.

I've been using Windows 8 for about a year now on my home PC and, metro interface aside, it's great. .... The guts of the system are fine.

And that, my friend, is the great tragedy that is Windows 8. Underneath the flawed user interface is the best Windows NT system ever. Considering what it does, it uses less memory, is more stable, runs faster and is downright better than any Windows before.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[Anonymous Coward]

The tiles are here to stay. Microsoft hopes that people to choose Windows Phone because it looks just like the metro apps that they've launched by mistake on their Windows desktop.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[WillAffleckUW]

Camels are adapted to their environment.

Windows ... not at all. It provides a familiar interface to a collection of hardware and software.

By changing it so that customers hate it, MSFT make people want to "upgrade" even less.

Now excuse me, I have to wipe my touch screen again from spewing up my latte after hearing about WinDex.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[Whorhay]

I've never really understood the use of having multiple desktops under the same user. To me it has always struck me as a way of making work harder because now you have things seperated even further. I like having two monitors because I want more desktop space, using virtual desktops doesn't give you more space because you still end up tabbing back and forth between them.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[Dr_Barnowl]

It's more of a task-switching thing for me.

I have multiple contexts I work in during the day. Each time I change tasks, but don't want to close the windows for the task I was doing before, I move to a new desktop. That, plus one desktop devoted entirely to communications (email, social media, etc), and I can switch between contexts with one or two ctrl-alt-arrow key combos, rather than painstakingly reconstructing the window layout each time I switch.

Until the OS supports saving a group of apps, complete with window position, open documents, etc (which would require a lot of app support), this is the best solution to task switching I've got.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[the eric conspiracy]

After Windows 8 a camel would be a huge improvement.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[erp_consultant]

I find that it works best if you have a laptop and no secondary monitor. On my home office desktop machine I have 2 external monitors so I have no need for multiple virtual desktops.

If I find myself using my laptop then it can be handy to have virtual desktops. For me, it keeps things neater and cleaner. I can devote one desktop for email/skype/etc. A second desktop for spreadsheets, a third for remote desktop sessions.

It's nice to have the choice.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[erp_consultant]

An even greater tragedy is the Microsoft marketing department. Those clowns can't seem to sell anything in the consumer market (ok, XBox...I'll give you that). It seems that every marketing campaign falls flat on its face. Remember those ads with Jerry Seinfeld? Millions of dollars of MS shareholder money was wasted on that.

So instead of promoting what is good about W8 (smooth, stable, low memory requirements, etc.) they focus on a bunch of people dancing in an office. Great. Makes me want to just run out and buy one.

And who picks the colors they use? It's bad enough that the Contacts app takes up the whole screen and is virtually useless functionality wise. Just looking at the thing is nothing short of jarring. MS - ditch the clown paint and hire some designers that can create an appealing interface.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no - they broke the backup infrastructure, the broke USB3 support in the emergency recovery tools (so you have to restore via USB2 - hope your brand new laptop has that), you can't boot into recovery from a microSD (meaning recovering to a tablet is nearly impossible) and did all they could to make it literally disposable.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[Anonymous Coward]

This "one size fits all" approach is just an abomination.

We should make MS... ...We should make MS and Gnome's... ...We should make devs write that 100 times with ink.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[crunchygranola]

Windows ... not at all. It provides a familiar interface to a collection of hardware and software.

By changing it so that customers hate it, MSFT make people want to "upgrade" even less.

Worse than that for the Wintel duopoly - they are suppressing sales of new machines. I have a home Windows computer which I keep to run Windows-only apps for my family that I would like to upgrade, but no way am I buying a system with Windows 8. I could buy a system with Windows 7 still, but I have to pay extra for a limited selection - basically a "business system", when all I want is a cheap little box.

So that old system still limps along, waiting for the day when I can get a replacement that the family won't loathe, meanwhile Wintel are throwing away a sale.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[Anonymous Coward]

They should've known better. Nobody ever won a popularity contest for having good internals.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[El_Oscuro]

In Linux, the killer feature is that each desktop has a separate taskbar. I once had several major migrations running from my workstation, and had a separate deskop named for each one of them. This feature made keeping track of the tasks in each project much easier.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that XP and up had (I've only tried it in Vista/7) didn't work that well, though; they're closer to separate X11 sessions on Linux than virtual desktops. You couldn't move windows from one desktop to another, they can't interact, and switching between them, I believe, involved screen blanking. It felt more like half-switching a Terminal Services session (i.e. Remote Desktop).

Of course, I don't think I've actually seen the new multiple desktops, so I have no idea if they managed to improve it, or if it's stuck at the old thing...

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[thetoastman]

It's more of a task-switching thing for me.

I have multiple contexts I work in during the day. Each time I change tasks, but don't want to close the windows for the task I was doing before, I move to a new desktop. That, plus one desktop devoted entirely to communications (email, social media, etc), and I can switch between contexts with one or two ctrl-alt-arrow key combos, rather than painstakingly reconstructing the window layout each time I switch.

Until the OS supports saving a group of apps, complete with window position, open documents, etc (which would require a lot of app support), this is the best solution to task switching I've got.

KDE Activities?

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[Dutch Gun]

MS - ditch the clown paint and hire some designers that can create an appealing interface.

It won't work. From what I can tell, the entire designer community is currently convinced that gradients, transparency, and actual buttons or menus you can see / distinguish are the devil, and everything should be either some completely flat shade of white on white, or else some hideous primary color that makes your eyes bleed.

Everywhere I look, I see formerly attractive interfaces turning flat and ugly. I was really hoping Windows 9... er 10 wouldn't keep the same horrible-looking theme, but it looks like they're sticking with it for now.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it as having multiple screens, except that you can only look at one at a time.
With proper shortcuts, you can switch very quickly to any desktop, so in essence it's like a souped-up task manager: you can easily switch contexts, where each context already has the apps you need in the foreground, rather than having to choose them from the taskbar, or alt-tabing.

Gnome goes one step further where if you have two monitors, it allows you to change the desktops on one screen and have the other one fixed.
I usually keep my IDE open on the fixed screen, and then have different desktops for communication (email + IM), browser with docs, assorted testing stuff (terminals, file browser, etc.), music.
That way I can quickly switch between writing code to testing to communicating without ever losing track of my work.

I think multiple desktops, like multiple monitors, is one of those things you don't really appreciate until you have it.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows, since XP, has had this ability. You needed a SysInternals tool to enable it. But, finally, a welcome addition.

It was always a broken implementation at best.

As far as I'm aware, it worked on the principle of having just the one desktop, and hiding and restoring windows based on the current "desktop".
It worked, more or less, but the results were always janky and there were quite a few apps which simply broke because they used some crap custom UI framework which didn't like to be hidden.

They were also a pain to use in the day-to-day. For instance, of all the virtual desktop packages I tried (and I tried almost all of them) none of them had an easy way to move windows from one desktop to another.
In the end I gave up and just started using the task bar for context switching, like some sort of savage.

I hope Windows 10 gets it right. I might have to work again with Windows in the future, so it'd be nice to have this natively for a change.
Bonus points if they actually introduce new ideas to the multiple desktops paradigm. The current Gnome incarnation is pretty good, but there's still room for improvement.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[Anonymous Coward]

First start of a windows 8 laptop greeted me with a non-antialiased tiny white EULA on clear blue background, with monitor brightness pushed to the max. It even had the kindness to include some documents (privacy policy IIRC) that were to be found online by their line-length cryptic URL.

I had a good laugh.

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[RoLi]

An even greater tragedy is the Microsoft marketing department. Those clowns can't seem to sell anything in the consumer market (ok, XBox...I'll give you that).

Is that the same XBox that lost billions in the first versions, barely broke even in the second version and is now again losing billions in the third version?

Re:Camel = Horse designed by committee...

[erp_consultant]

The same XBox. I was being generous and trying to appear to not be some anti MS troll. Not to suggest that you are but I digress....

My point was that MS can build decent hardware. The often mentioned MS mouse and keyboards good examples. The Zune music player had some good technical attributes, despite being a dismal failure in the marketplace. Same with the Surface tablet.

The problem MS has, in my view, is that they can make decent products but they can't seem to convince people in the consumer market to buy them. And that is a Sales and Marketing failure. Time and time again MS comes out with good products that flop in the consumer market.

XBox, from a financial standpoint, has lost a lot of money as you point out. But MS's stated intent was to get a presence in the "living room" and from that standpoint I think they have succeeded.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[cayenne8]

Shouldn't it be called "WinX"?

Then, we'd know it was on par and lock step with Apple's OS going forward.

;)

Little Nicky

[sumdumfuk]

The guy from the video looks like Adam Sandler in the movie Little Nicky. His part is on the wrong side though. Kind of makes sense Nicky=Son of Satan Microsoft=Satan ;)

Re:Little Nicky

[Anonymous Coward]

"super"

only in a literal sense

[globaljustin]

Is a re-sizable tile like a window?

haha...oh man...

i love the hand-wringing and controversy over the 'Start' menu...it's the most abstract, marketing-based 'feature' and it just blows my mind that they spend, probably Million$ all told to develop these ridiculous over-complicated, over-built pointless features

Re:only in a literal sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Obvious is not Obvious to UX designers

List of Things
VS
Abstract Symbols, Boxes and Hidden Search Fields

I work in a UX team and some of the shit people come up with makes me want to push them through a closed window.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from being amazingly off-topic, how about you also point how how many non-Telsa fires there were last year? You know... the estimate of about 150,000. (http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicles). How about mentioning how many serious injuries were a result of Telsa fires? That one's easy, precisely zero.

Stop being an ass.

My favorite versioning plan

[Cro Magnon]

I think they should go back to year versioning. It's simple and easy to understand. It works for Office, Quicken, and my car.

Re:My favorite versioning plan

[ledow]

And provides a real-world slap in the face.

I had to explain to a school once that we were still deploying Office 2003 to students who came into the school system in 2004.

That seemed to wake them up a bit, when they realised that the reason the kids found the IT stuff strange was that they weren't even BORN when it first came out, and was nothing like they were using at home.

When they ask what the difference is between 2003 and 2013, you can say - with a straight face - the same as the difference between the 80's and the 90's. When they realise their lesson plans and teaching are 10 YEARS out of date, it kind of shakes them up a bit.

detailed feature list leaked!

[sootman]

Full list of planned features here.

Re:detailed feature list leaked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oooh, buuurrn!

Re:OMFG, stupid

[defaria]

Could it be because Windows Lost? ;-)

Windows NG was a better name

[Spy Handler]

Windows: Next Generation

Can be shortened to WiNG

Maybe even a flying wing logo. (man oh man why didn't I become a genius advertising guru instead of a loser IT geek)

And the version after this could be called Windows into Darkness

Re:Windows NG was a better name

[suutar]

Well, after avoiding 9, going to Windows DS9 would be silly, but Windows Voyager could work.

Re:Windows NG was a better name

[Chris Mattern]

...and when it boots up, we can have a sound clip of Patrick Steward saying, "Make it so!"

Re:Windows NG was a better name

[sound vision]

Then it sounds like a cheesy TV series.

Re:Windows NG was a better name

[sootman]

No no no, you want Windows RG (Really Good) edition.

Re:Windows NG was a better name

[Anonymous Coward]

This name was already taken. A graphics library that predated DirectX
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinG

Re:Windows NG was a better name

[Anonymous Coward]

>Can be shortened to WiNG

Promptly nicknamed WhinGe, it crashed and burned.

Re:Windows NG was a better name

[Anonymous Coward]

It's going to have a very short run in the enterprise.

Re:Windows NG was a better name

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was 9, but had windows 7 features, wouldn't it be 7 of 9?

They needed to set a precedent

[seven of five]

In 5 years they can jump from 12 to 14 and it won't be a big deal.

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[Anonymous Coward]

Article date: 4/1, April Fool's Day.

Quote source: Cheryl Tunt, who is a character on Archer.

You're welcome.

Is there a classic mode that removes all the crap?

[Eg0r]

No? Fuck of my lawn...

Dread/Weariness vs. Anticipation

[Anonymous Coward]

In all seriousness, I suspect that the number of IT personnel who are dreading having to implement, and train users for, Windows 10 is fairly high, compared to those who are excited about possible new features.

For the vast majority of users, Windows is just a container for their applications that can ONLY run on Windows. Other than that, they're completely indifferent to Windows and Microsoft. To many the exciting or enjoyable operating system with few issues is a tablet OS or Mac OSX.

It is VERY hard to conceive of any real ROI for Windows 10 that will replace the general reason for upgrading of "uh, it came with the computer".

MS did this before with MS Word

[Primate Pete]

MS Word jumped directly from version 2.0c to version 6, so that MS could catch up with WordPerfect.

Oddly, changing the version numbering doesn't actually make the product better. Who'd have guessed that?

Re:MS did this before with MS Word

[jfdavis668]

Word for Windows jumped to 6 to match Word for Mac, not Wordperfect. Word on the Mac was already at 6.

Re:MS did this before with MS Word

[Anonymous Coward]

and Word for DOS had already passed 5.0 at that point, too. (Word for DOS and Word for Mac were version synchronized from 3.0 to 6.0; Word for Windows was synchronized at 6.0.)

Re:MS did this before with MS Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly, changing the version numbering doesn't actually make the product better. Who'd have guessed that?

It doesn't?

-- Posted from Firefox 3.7e4.

Re:MS did this before with MS Word

[Teresita]

Oddly, changing the version numbering doesn't actually make the product better. Who'd have guessed that?

I dunno, MS-DOS 4.01 was slightly better than MS-DOS 4.0. So I'm for waiting for Windows 10.01.

Re:MS did this before with MS Word

[cbhacking]

Similarly, the very first NT release was Windows NT 3.1, to match the then-current 16-bit and consumer-focused Windows 3.1 version number. As with Word, that's not so much a competition with outside products as it is a matter of keeping up with the version numbers of similar products from elsewhere in the company.

Product Differentiation Needed

[Grindalf]

Can we not just have a large tower PC based OS, that works and installs offline via DISKS and that has swappable / maintainable cards and devices. A machine that's another order of power in comparison with the previous year in terms of processor, 3D etc. I'm sick of the sight of "cheaped off" slow thin breakable devices that are nearly impossible to use for professional work, and even harder to open and maintain. Keep the smudge screen toys separate, we're not fooled any more, they're rubbish! How about a second operating system for tablet devices called “Windows Bomb Boy Chintz.” That way the kids would know that there's a better life out there, filled with jobs, large screen entertainment and games that work.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[jamiesan]

And if they create a Developer Edition, They can call it Windows Developer Edition X..... WinDEX!

Catching up with Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on 21 already. It doesn't bite. :)

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Frnknstn]

I didn't know Teslas had tanks? What do they store in them?

Kinda' like Android smoothness

[Imazalil]

I think this will be like Google touting Android's smoothness for few straight releases, telling us each time it's finally really smooth. :-)

Be prepared to see "new and improved unified experience" for at lest another couple versions.

My feedback to MS

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't use my phone, tablet and desktop PC the same. I DO NOT want to have the same interface in them all: swiping works great on phones and tablets, but sucks royally on PCs.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[blueg3]

Chemical potential energy.

Windows 10 = iPhone 6

[xeno]

Wait... what? Multiple desktops, same apps behave properly as fullscreen tablet apps or desktop windows, snapping control, hybrid menus, launch/switch/end gestures (copied from WebOS and Unity), a task view with app and desktop preview... Every single one of these features has been out for years on Linux (and most on Android or OS X), in much more polished form. It's 2014 and the Windows team is just now figuring out how to have two window managers co-exist? How very retro!

Windows 10 vs. Linux Mint/Ubuntu/Fedora/etc = iPhone 6 vs. Samsung Galaxy/Note series...
The dominant/big-name brand is _years_ behind and floating forward on market momentum.

Re:Windows 10 = iPhone 6

[dbIII]

Reminds me of how the ads should have run:
"Windows, because copying Apple was my idea."

With a combination of window snapshots, multiple desktops and RDP that does not entirely suck it appears MS is close to catching up with the Enlightenment window manager on X from a year or two before Slashdot started. Or Xerox "rooms" from way back.

Re:Windows 10 = iPhone 6

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep they've been around for ages and I don't want ANY of them enabled by default.

Re:Windows 10 = iPhone 6

[fanatic]

With ... RDP that does not entirely suck it appears MS is close to catching up with the Enlightenment window manager on X...

Actually, RDP is one of the things I must concede (as much as I hate it) where MS is ahead. Straight X over a WAN with any latency really sucks. (Caveat: I haven't tried xrdp yet.)

Re:Windows 10 = iPhone 6

[dbIII]

I'm discussing the combination of features, but yes, RDP, xrdp, NX and VNC are pretty much equivalent over congested links because they have the same underlying idea - screenscrape one way, input events the other and send as little as possible. Anything other than entire desktops is rare though which sucks and improving networks make the difference with X less noticable.

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[Anonymous Coward]

said Microsoft PR rep Cheryl Tunt.

Is her name seriously Cheryl Tunt?

Re:OMFG, stupid

[SJHillman]

If your Tesla has a gas tank, you might be doing it wrong...

Sigh....

[plazman30]

There should be ONE way to launch your apps. Either a start menu or tiles. In my opinion, what you need is ONE app with 2 UIss. If you're on a desktop, then show me the desktop UI. If you're on a touch device, show me the touch UI.

Re:Sigh....

[ledow]

Fuck that, even.

Just give me a damn option. Who cares what silly nonsense the latest fad is to launch programs (and, sorry, Windows 8 Tiles = Windows 95 Active Desktop in all but name)? Just give me the option - if it's really THAT good, I'll switch to it. If not, I've lost nothing.

And the development time is literally in the "freeware utility" range so don't give me shit about how long it takes MS to manage two shell paradigms.

I've deployed Windows 8 - but wouldn't do it without Classic Shell and specifically its GPO settings. When I constantly ask myself WHY that's not part of Windows any more, it makes me question what I'm expecting from Windows in the future.

P.S. Microsoft - make it a fucking single setting in GPO to push Desktop Backgrounds, Logon Screens, Lock Screens, Colour Themes etc. to clients (and put AD pictures into Windows 8 User Icons on logon). While you're there, make it a free feature to put a corporate signature in Exchange without poncing about with transport rules and copying files down to clients. 20 years and we still don't have the SIMPLEST of things done right.

Re:Sigh....

[shutdown -p now]

Tiles in the desktop case are not so much for launching as for widget-like functionality - presenting data at a glance. If you don't need them, you can just remove them all and end up with a clean Start menu that just has the app list.

Major version material?

[mand1nga]

Is it me or all these little features could be just added to W8 ?

Re:OMFG, stupid

[LessThanObvious]

Warm nacho cheese.

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[Bogtha]

Fuck everything, we're doing Windows 10.

Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of operating systems in this country. Windows XP was the operating system to run. Then Apple came out with OS X. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called Windows Vista. That's Aero UI and a sidebar. For widgets. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened - the bastards went to mobile. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling a desktop operating system with a sidebar. Aero or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to Windows 10.

Sure, we could go to Windows 9 next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, 8 worked out pretty well, and 9 is the next number after 8. So let's play it safe. Let's make a better UI and call it the Start Screen. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!

In response, Mac will come out with OS 11

[rolfwind]

And MS will still be behind.

MS OS X ?

[daniel23]

win10? If they had humour the'd call it windows Ah

Re:MS OS X ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hex numbers in (Visual) Basic (Script/.net) are denoted with a &h. So hA!

this must be stopped.

[nimbius]

Gentlemen I'm from the future, a microsoft you do not yet know, and I bring dire warnings. here in this foul year of 2054 where we've reached windows 456,776 elite premium solar helium wombat version, the releases never end.. The upcoming version is just a box with a nine volt battery and a stack of old playing cards but we cannot stop. newer products are being released every millisecond without so much as a tertiary consideration for what, if anything, users still want from us. The leaks are also getting worse, with version 914,135 electric pickle teleportation premium recently being leaked from the year 2089 by a screaming, sweating man in a time-suit known only as ball-mar. The latest version of Microsoft Windows RT CBBQ pro pony mobile implant indigestion premium was also mistakenly leaked to a confused Thomas Jefferson during a continental congress meeting of the Land Ordinance of 1784. this was approved by the Microsoft board of directors in the year 2153, despite the computer not even existing, with a standing ovation.

help us. Even now windows 11-14 are being released. First to feral cats off a european costal city, next to an air conditioner in tempe arizona, and finally to a street light in a dennys parking lot. Windows 28 will simultaneously require, and forbid, the use of a touchscreen to gain functionality to a windows "start" button (later this will be renamed the Gorloc device, in honor of Gorlok the malevolent for a future release predicted by the corporate runemaster during the coming interplanetary ork battle.) I beg you, stop the madness.

Re:this must be stopped.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentlemen I'm from the future, a microsoft you do not yet know, and I bring dire warnings. here in this foul year of 2054 where we've reached windows 456,776 elite premium solar helium wombat version, the releases never end.. The upcoming version is just a box with a nine volt battery and a stack of old playing cards but we cannot stop. newer products are being released every millisecond without so much as a tertiary consideration for what, if anything, users still want from us. The leaks are also getting worse, with version 914,135 electric pickle teleportation premium recently being leaked from the year 2089 by a screaming, sweating man in a time-suit known only as ball-mar. The latest version of Microsoft Windows RT CBBQ pro pony mobile implant indigestion premium was also mistakenly leaked to a confused Thomas Jefferson during a continental congress meeting of the Land Ordinance of 1784. this was approved by the Microsoft board of directors in the year 2153, despite the computer not even existing, with a standing ovation.

help us. Even now windows 11-14 are being released. First to feral cats off a european costal city, next to an air conditioner in tempe arizona, and finally to a street light in a dennys parking lot. Windows 28 will simultaneously require, and forbid, the use of a touchscreen to gain functionality to a windows "start" button (later this will be renamed the Gorloc device, in honor of Gorlok the malevolent for a future release predicted by the corporate runemaster during the coming interplanetary ork battle.) I beg you, stop the madness.

That's ridiculous. Windows RT won't be around then.

Re:this must be stopped.

[sootman]

> Windows 28 will simultaneously require, and forbid, the use of a touchscreen

You owe me one (1) new keyboard and one (1) new monitor.

Re:this must be stopped.

[Anonymous Coward]

Merely think of the future. ;}

Re:this must be stopped.

[Anonymous Coward]

This one has me in stitches. Thanks for that, a good laugh to start the day.

Widgets - Clippy with a happy face

[WillAffleckUW]

"Would you like to have me format all your cloud storage for easy access by the NSA?"

No.

"The process will be completed in 3 minutes."

But I said No.

"Oops, they copied your girlfriend's pics."

Uninstall Clippy Widget.

"Security has now been set to Tell The World Everything."

Re:OMFG, stupid

[X10]

Windows One - oh!

Re:OMFG, stupid

[WillAffleckUW]

I didn't know Teslas had tanks? What do they store in them?

Bits and bytes.

They have a lot of potential energy.

It's called physics.

Why is Vista afraid of Windows 7?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because 7 ate 9!

/me runs away.

Re:Unified Experience Across Devices Win10

[WillAffleckUW]

The thing is, Windows 9 crashed and burned.

The film was destroyed, of course.

Move on, nothing to see here!

[DanielOom]

Ten will have a start button. How will it be different from Vista or XP?

Re:Move on, nothing to see here!

[Sepodati]

Why does it have to be different? Win8 was different, and MS got torn to hell for it. This is exactly what everyone wanted, isn't it? You get a start menu that doesn't take over the entire screen, applications in windows, a definitive switch to tablet vs. desktop mode. Win8 was supposed to be this unifying experience, but it weighed far to heavily on the touch/table experience rather than unifying. This looks like a great solution, in my opinion, but then I don't really have a problem with Win8... well, Win8.1, specifically.

Re:Move on, nothing to see here!

[ConceptJunkie]

Ten will have a start button. How will it be different from Vista or XP?

It will be uglier, for one thing. You can count on that.

Re:Move on, nothing to see here!

[ILongForDarkness]

I agree. They seemed to handle the "dockable" tablet market pretty well. I think this is the way the market is going. Laptops somewhat killed the desktops, tablets are killing the laptop because people don't want to lug an extra couple pounds, want 10 hr battery life etc. Soon the average user will realize: hey all I want is a mouse, a bigger screen and a keyboard at home not the whole box: win 10 seems like it will handle that pretty well.

Yes multiple desktops!

[Kludge]

Windows has caught up with fvwm. 1.

Re:Yes multiple desktops!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had that on Windows 10 years ago. Never made much use of it. So never bothered.

Re:Yes multiple desktops!

[JoeMerchant]

Windows 3.1 had accessory tools (I think I used one called "Dashboard") that did multiple desktops - what's that, like 23 years ago?

Re:Yes multiple desktops!

[mungtor]

Yes, right at the time that LCDs for extra physical displays are so cheap that it's completely irrelevant. Awesome indeed.

Re:Yes multiple desktops!

[Andtalath]

It's been in power tools since XP.
Has been crap all along though.

Re:Yes multiple desktops!

[ArcadeMan]

I had multiple desktops over 30 years ago. One desk had a Commodore 64, another desk had a Color Computer 2, etc.

Re:Yes multiple desktops!

[NJRoadfan]

Xerox Rooms was one: http://toastytech.com/guis/xrm...

Symantec's Norton Navigator for Windows 95 included a virtual desktop feature as well and it integrated into the taskbar. http://www.danielsays.com/ss-g...

Whats odd is that until recently, only X11 windows managers seemed to have the feature standard. Apple only added the feature a few years ago to OS X, and now Windows finally has it.

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[neilo_1701D]

Umm... the date of the article was April 1, 2013.

This was a satire piece from 18 months ago. Names made up etc.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[homey of my owney]

It needs to go to Eleven [moves dial up to 11].

heh, MS killed Windows 9 before release!

[swschrad]

a lesson they should have learned one major release earlier, aren't I right, kids?

Re:heh, MS killed Windows 9 before release!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you mean to say, "am I not right?" Surely you did.

Dear MS

[Opportunist]

One size fits all never worked. It doesn't with underwear, it doesn't even with socks. Sorry. Cutting corners here will only mean that your OS will be the WORST choice on ALL products. Because every other product in the market that is fitted to the type of device it is meant to run on will have a better suited interface and give the user a better experience.

One size fits all is nothing but a mediocre compromise, and by definition inferior to any specialized solution.

Re:Dear MS

[Anonymous Coward]

True, just like condoms. And unlike Windows X, don't know how I'd get along without my Magnum Xs!

Re:Dear MS

[rahvin112]

Two reasons.

Application lock-in, Microsoft is trying to leverage their existing large application comparability for leverage.

The second is related to the first, in the MS is trying to use there large monopoly in the desktop market to build a monopoly in handheld, tablet and phone.

I believe both will be a failure, they sat on their hands two long while Apple and Google built OS's and now have significant application catalogs. Android and iOS will be very difficult to displace at this point. They'd do better to focus their attention on maintaining and building their enterprise services and continuing to build and support desktop computers. That would probably mean porting office and other major enterprise applications to both the iOS and Android. I simply don't believe they can displace android or iOS at this point.

Re:Dear MS

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Your criticism is two years too late.
This isn't one size fits all. Win8 was one size fits all with the "Everyone gets a start screen" attitude. This is bringing back what made Windows great, user choice. Don't like the start screen? Fine, use the start menu. Not happy with that? Fine customize it till the cows come home. It will work differently on different devices which is exactly what people have been asking for.

Re:Dear MS

[shutdown -p now]

If you have actually looked at the screenshots, this is a major backtracking from "one size fits all" as exemplified by Win8.

Re:Dear MS

[Anonymous Coward]

>One size fits all never worked. It doesn't with underwear

Tell the Linux users that.

Re:Dear MS

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting, everyone else is attempting to move to one UI for all as well.

Re:Dear MS

[Rich0]

The problem with this is that unless the new OS uses win32 on all those platforms, they don't have that huge application base they're trying to leverage.

Win8 was the attempt to get everybody to move to Metro, and it failed. Of course, they were stupid to introduce the app store on the desktop since that probably REALLY deterred people from porting over. They should have gotten everybody to port first, and then changed the rules once everybody was on the new cross-platform API.

In any case, I think they'd be doomed anyway. If you're building a Facebook reader it isn't that big of a deal to make a one-size-fits-all UI. If it only has 6 menu options users on the 20" screen won't care so much about the 1" tile buttons. The problem is that nobody has come up with a way to make full productivity applications work on things like phones. You can strip out all the features, and people will tolerate them as viewers or apps for making tweaks, but what serious business says, "you know, we don't need professional tools - we're going to compose the next Hollywood movie using an app designed to add filters to something shot with a phone cam."

Heck, Adobe just announced that they're making Photoshop available over a web browser. I'm still not sure how well that will work (does html5 support graphics tablets?). Even that potential source of failure exposes the real problem here - people doing serious work are hard to box into super-simplified applications. People want their 15 floating windows, and their magic USB tablet that senses pen pressure, angle (2DOF), button pressure, distance, etc.

Re:Dear MS

[Opportunist]

There is exactly no synergy effect between desktop and handheld devices. There isn't even the same kind of market between them. Look at the appliances on the desktop, then look at the "same" kind of tools on handhelds. Can you imagine using the same user interface on both? Or wouldn't you rather think that the appliance that uses the UI of one on the other is "doing it wrong"?

For reference, see Windows 8. Or WinCE for the reverse. It just doesn't work right, look right or feel right.

There is also not the same market in any other area, be it games, development (just in case anyone is crazy enough to actually develop software on a cellphone...) or ANY other area. It just doesn't work that way.

Re:Dear MS

[Opportunist]

Who is?

Re:OMFG, stupid

[kad77]

Perhaps my comment was rude, and 'a bit over the top' as you say. Microsoft's VP of Operating Systems is probably not a moron.

My initial reaction to Belfiore seeming to downgrade a previous version of their flagship product by referring to it as a first gen Prius, and then extending the bad car analogy to try and sell us the new shiny pissed me off.

Comparing a previous version to an niche, ugly, low powered econobox (that is heavily government subsidized) to an electric car, made by an independent company and is decidedly not meant to be mass market cheap, nor aimed at the same demographic... Having the people in charge of these products make these statements gives me the impression the same brain trust that turned Windows 7 into Windows 8 is still running the show.

What car would he have made Windows 8 in that analogy?

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[Ravaldy]

Just a wild guess here:
1. You run Linux
2. You're still in school

Windows 1010?

[Anonymous Coward]

looks more like Windows 3 to me.

Re:Windows 1010?

[__aaclcg7560]

The eight-bit retro look is coming back in style these days. New name should be Windows Minecraft.

Re:Windows 1010?

[ConceptJunkie]

Well, that's appropriate because Windows 8, with its limited palette and ugly "Flat" UI looks like Windows 2.

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[cptdondo]

Yeah, but it's turning out to be true. Who wudda thunk it?

Microsoft is like Obama

[gelfling]

No one actually believes what they say anymore.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Stargoat]

Well no wonder your Tesla blew up....

blogs.windows.com down

[Dracula]

Amusingly, it appears to have been running Wordpress.

Well the pattern fits

[UnknowingFool]

Given the history of Windows naming, MS likes to change the pattern after two versions:
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.11
. . .
Windows 95
Windows 98
. . .
Windows ME
Windows XP
. . .
Windows Vista
. . .
Windows 7
Windows 8
. . .
Windows 10

Re:Well the pattern fits

[NormalVisual]

You forgot Windows 3.0, which was the first version that really took off. There was also Windows 1.0, 2.0, Windows/286, and Windows/386, which fit better into your naming pattern.

Re:Well the pattern fits

[Anonymous Coward]

XBox
. . .
XBox 360
. . .
XBox One

Numbering Fail.

Re:Well the pattern fits

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Windows for Workgroups....

Re:Well the pattern fits

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 2000 is missing.

Re:Well the pattern fits

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't group ME and XP together.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_ME
"Windows ME was the last Windows release to be based on the Windows 9x (monolithic) kernel and MS-DOS."

There wasn't an actual continuation from ME to XP; they just forced everyone over the established NT line.

NT 3.1
NT 3.5x
-- major reskin --
NT 4.0
Windows 2000 (NT 5.0)
-- major reskin --
XP (NT 5.1)
64-bit XP / Server 2003 (NT 5.2)
-- major reskin --
Vista / Server 2008 (NT 6.0)
-- major reskin --
Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 (NT 6.1)
-- major reskin --
Windows 8 / Server 2012 (NT 6.2)
Windows 8.1 / Server 2012 R2 (NT 6.3)
Windows 10 (NT ???)

Notice that the year-based name system for servers has been in use since 2000.

Re:Well the pattern fits

[jones_supa]

That's actually quite interesting. Something different to the traditional "good/bad" lists. :)

Re:Well the pattern fits

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, after a 360, you have come one full circle back to where you started from.

Re:Well the pattern fits

[UnknowingFool]

Notice that you are concerned with actual versions numbers while I am talking about marketing. For MS they're terrible at this sort of thing. MS is the opposite of Apple (and frankly everyone else) in this regard. While Apple had to switch from cats to places for their codenames, they had a legitimate reason (They were running out of cats). However, overall it has always been 10.x "Codename". For MS, it has been Windows "Something" with the something being a version, a date, a codename, acronym, whatever MS is thinking at the time.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[neoritter]

The Chevy Volt?

Why not...

[TomRC]

Why not just merge the Start menu and the desktop once and for all, with all the best features of both?
Hold down the Windows key to instantly hide all but the desktop.

Basically like clicking in the lower right corner on Win7, but much faster, while bringing in some of the UI features from Win8.

Get rid of the various "hover/slide in from the edge" Win8 conventions - put those options on the desktop.

Make the task bar default visible only on the Desktop (optionally always visible, of course).
For touch, keep a transparent Start button hovering in the lower left - hold touch on it if you don't have a Windows key/button to show the desktop.
Apps could request true full screen to get rid of the button, of course.

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows key + M minimizes all windows to Desktop.

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just merge the Start menu and the desktop once and for all, with all the best features of both?
Hold down the Windows key to instantly hide all but the desktop.

Basically like clicking in the lower right corner on Win7, but much faster, while bringing in some of the UI features from Win8.

That has the same problem as the start screen, i.e. inducing the "doorway effect" which causes you to lose track of some or all of the information you trying to remember about whatever job you were working on.

The power of the start menu is that you can start additional programs while still being able to see what you were doing previously which reduces cognitive load (and the associated mistakes and time wasting that comes from increased cognitive stress).

Well, /. getting lower and lower

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at all the 'insightful' trolls who will almost break their necks for an opportunity to bash MS..

Oh well, time for a new tech site.

Re:Well, /. getting lower and lower

[Anonymous Coward]

Try soylent news. soylent news is people.

Re:Well, /. getting lower and lower

[0111 1110]

Since microsoft are acting like a bunch of fucking morons they deserve some bashing. If you are a microsoft fanboy then what are you doing here in the first place?

About god damn time..

[william.meaney1]

That i can use CTRL-C and CTRL-V on the command line. Jesus christ...

Re:About god damn time..

[Prien715]

...which I may add, does not work on Linux. Ctrl+C is break, so most terms use Ctrl+Shift+C. It didn't really become apparent how weird this was before I started using a Mac, where Command+C and Command+V were consistent across both the normal programs and the CLI.

Re:About god damn time..

[ShaunC]

In the meantime you might look at QuickEdit mode for the command prompt, if you haven't already. I've spent so much time in PuTTY over the years that I've grown accustomed to right-click being paste when I'm in a shell. This also works in cmd if you set it to use QuickEdit mode (having to hit Enter to copy a selection is just plain unintuitive, though).

Re:About god damn time..

[WuphonsReach]

Most terms (PuTTY/SecureCRT), it is better to use the traditional Shift+Delete, Shift+Ins and Ctrl+Insert - I've never heard of Ctrl+Shift+C before.

Re:About god damn time..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ctrl+insert and shift+insert for copy and paste work in both normal applications and linux terminals (not the windows command prompt, of course), so they have replaced ctrl+c and ctrl+v as my shortcuts for copy/paste.

I always wondered if having the two pairs of shortcut keys as separate clipboards would improve productivity... ever have to paste two different things repeatedly?

Re:About god damn time..

[Prien715]

Thanks! That's helpful.

GNOME Terminal lists Ctrl+Shift+C in its edit menu (that's how I learned it) -- but the combinations you list work as well and better across different programs.

Every other version

[Anonymous Coward]

So if they're skipping over 9 and going to 10, does that mean that they've expertly bypassed the version that was supposed to not suck?

Re:Every other version

[jones_supa]

Haha, I was thinking the same. Someone at Microsoft was reading one of those lists: "Windows 7 good...Windows 8 bad...Windows 8.1 good...Windows 9...aha! We're skipping that one!"

On the bright side

[DiamondGeezer]

At least it doesn't run bash.

Yes, linux nerds, the truth hurts. Linux has security holes. Enormous drive-18-wheeler-through-ones.

If you want to dish it out to M$ then you've got to be able to take it as well.

Re:On the bright side

[theskipper]

The "Post Anonymously" checkbox is right above where you type the comment subject.

Re:On the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

At least it doesn't run bash.

Yes, linux nerds, If you want to dish it out to M$ then you've got to be able to take it as well.

Personally I got sick of M$ fucking me, when they would savagely violate me I'd feel satisfied but ashamed for giving up something I shouldn't have. They are big and taking it is quite an experience, but I always have to buy protection because of the viruses.

Some people, like yourself, are still enjoying the windows experience. You must be drooling with 10 in your face because while it may not suck, you certainly will, again.

the truth hurts. Linux has security holes. Enormous drive-18-wheeler-through-ones.

Coincidentally, it's also the description your anus.

Only 15 years behind...

[Anonymous Coward]

Woohoo! I wonder if Windows 10 will launch on the 15th anniversary of OS X Public Beta?

I'm surprised this isn't being marketed as Windows /\ (pronounced "ten" not "bah") - but then again, maybe Windows Bah would be more appropriate.

Re:Only 15 years behind...

[Anonymous Coward]

Way for me to ruin a perfectly good joke... it is, of course, WIndows + (pronounced ten, not sure) -- but then again, maybe Windows Sure would be more appropriate....

Windows 9

[Anonymous Coward]

I am guessing here, but maybe Windows 9 was so bad they killed it off very early in the development , either that or they are trying exorcise the Ghost of Balmer still.

Windows as a service?

[Anonymous Coward]

From a live blog

"14:01pm: Question about how long Windows 10 will “last.” Microsoft answered that it can support operating systems for a long time. No answer on whether Windows 10 is the last major release, though (which is probably what the questioner was after)."

Re:OMFG, stupid

[sycodon]

I have been eagerly awaiting a one OS fits all devices solution.

I can't wait to load the three DVDs onto my phone and tablet!

Microsoft pays Homage to Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft, internally recognise that Apple is better, cooler, and classier and therefore to "ride the wave" they have decided the needed their own X (after all its sort of worked with the xbox)

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to make this cheese tank thing the center of their marketing. There are many folks who don't give a shit about the environment who love them some cheese. Probably don't want to offend the lactose intolerant.

7-8-8.1-10

[jsepeta]

somebody check -- is that an Intel math coprocessor bug?

Win7=good, 8=bad, 9=non-existant, 10=bad?

[NotDrWho]

I just think someone should have warned this guy that Windows follows the opposite of the Star Trek movie principle, so even releases always suck

Re:Win7=good, 8=bad, 9=non-existant, 10=bad?

[roc97007]

I was wondering about that too. It could be that this is their way to break the "even numbered curse". On the other hand, it could be an admission that two releases in a row are a-gonna suck.

Re: Win7=good, 8=bad, 9=non-existant, 10=bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

9=best

Re:Win7=good, 8=bad, 9=non-existant, 10=bad?

[CAOgdin]

They jumped over 9, it has been posited, because too many programmers looked for "Windows 9" as a substitute for "Windows 95 | Windows 98" in their code.

I wait with bated breath for Windows 10, to see if Microsoft has learned any lessons from NT, Vista, 7 and 8, which have become progressively 1) worse than their predecessors, 2) made irrelevant change to the GUI that confuse users, 3) didn't listen to customers (or even MVP) negative feedback, and 4) will be incompatible with existing, stable applications.

How about Windows Ne

[morgauxo]

How about Windows Ne?

Any chemists out there?

http://alturl.com/tkfwu

Re:How about Windows Ne

[kammermusik]

Despite being a nice joke for the subset of people being chemists this sounds too much like ME, and is thus negatively connoted.

Re:How about Windows Ne

[morgauxo]

That was the other half of the joke! I wish I could somehow magically convince Microsoft's marketers that Ne is a good idea. It would be like selling the Chevy Nova in Mexico!

It looks a bit verbose, but...

[warrax_666]

when you're right, you're right. ... but you have to wonder if we really shouldn't embrace the whole DevOps thing and just program our "scripts" in a real language such as Python. (Or Perl for that matter, I just happen to like the "subprocess" Python package for extremely simple unix-like automation.)

HAHHAHAHAHAHAHHA

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was an onion article.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[JoeMerchant]

Actually, they forgot the decimal point.

Windows 9 was going to be free for peeps with win8

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing this is the reason they're calling it 10, so they can back out of that deal.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Moof123]

Or they could adopt the new place names like Yosemite. Being a Washington state company they should do Windows Mount St. Helens.

Windows 10

[apcullen]

It's actually just a re-do of Windows 8, but they wrote it in octal.

Please allow me to try and explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 9 was bad. Really bad. Even Steve Ballmer got out of there before the release could be associated with his legacy in any way. Microsoft knew that it had to do better. Therefore we now have Windows 10 folks. Enjoy.

If the new Windows is so good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why are they playing a video of what it will do instead of actually demonstrating the product?

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/30/6873963/windows-10-continuum-touch-interface

Are they afraid of another demonstration crashing?

Re:If the new Windows is so good...

[srmalloy]

Then why are they playing a video of what it will do instead of actually demonstrating the product?

"Any advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."
-- James Klass

Re:OMFG, stupid

[rogoshen1]

then it's called a volt?

Windows 10 in 2016

[dean.cubed9947]

Windows 10 in 2016, so that the following year they can release Windows '18. That should make Windows 8 look like Windows -3!

Video wallpaper

[Lanterns]

Okay, okay, I'll admit it, I like the pretty pictures on Bing, especially those hypnotic repeating images. Is it too much to ask for video wallpaper so I can minimize and watch the ocean waves roll in?

Re:OMFG, stupid

[KingMotley]

New name changes.

Windows 9 (Home, Home Premium, Pro, etc) -> Windows 10 (Home, Home Premium, Pro, etc)
Windows 9N (No media player) -> Windows ID-10-T
Windows 9E (European version with no IE) -> Windows ID-10-T2

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows!? NEIN!

captcha: comedies

Aussie hipstrs don't give a XXXX for anything else

[Anonymous Coward]

The coolest things have X

Does this mean that hipsters are about to start drinking Castlemaine XXXX as their crappy beer of choice, now that Pabst Blue Ribbon is *so* 2010?

Obligatory; Why do Australians call their beer XXXX? Because they can't spell p**s. :-)

God, that's an old joke, they don't even sell XXXX on the UK market any more...

Had to decide where to lose a letter in the title due to lack of space. Decided I'd rather misspell "hipstrs" (with its oh-so-social-media loss of the "e") than make myself look like an illiterate cretin saying "dont". Did I choose correctly?

Wonderful!

[Anonymous Coward]

Console changes? Wait! Will batches support UTF-8 at last?

windows.com site slashdotted

[sarguin]

"Error establishing a database connection" (probably a MS-SQLServer database) ;)

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Dupple]

Look at it from the bright side, at least it wasn't called Windows One.

One Zero.

That's what it is

Re: World's Best Malware

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir that was neither "short" nor "sweet."

hidden fields

[globaljustin]

ha!

i love the new trend: a little square with 3 horizontal lines that lets you see an actual menu

it's so cross-platform!

i feel bad for you in a sense, being on a UX team as you describe...however, at least you (probably) get good work. I am a freelance designer and sometimes I feel I would trade the freedom I have to just do a good job and make a functional yet artistic design in order to have more consistency

it's always a trade-off

what if you started a culture of criticizing bad UX you see? like...idk...make a meme and post it around the office that demonstrates your idea...something to get a conversation started but won't seem like you criticizing other team member's work?

Re:hidden fields

[Hes Nikke]

i love the new trend: a little square with 3 horizontal lines that lets you see an actual menu

I prefer the term Hamburger Button.

Re:hidden fields

[globaljustin]

Hamburger Button.

lol

2015

[fulldecent]

2015 will be the year of Windows on the desktop... finally!

They know it will suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is just trying to keep with "Odd Numbered Windows Don't Suck."

Microsoft employees are calling it Windows Two

[Anonymous Coward]

That includes my wife, my son, and most of my friends. I guess /. doesn't understand binary. This used to be a technical site.

The real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

They wanted to call it Windows Number 9 but couldn't get the deal worked out with Yoko Ono to use Revolution 9 for the advertising campaign.
"number 9...number 9...number 9..."

What a load of crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite realising it would be futile I decided to look at the linked articles.

And all I can say about Windows 10 is what a load of old crap.

The only thing worth considering is that the command prompt now has about 5% of the functionality of a *nix shell and finally has some text editing stuff available.

Microsoft simply don't get it any more. Not one bit.

NO DESKTOP USER WANTS THOSE SHITTY TILES.

" Windows 10 will offer a tailored experience...

[Radical Moderate]

... for all hardware across a single platform family.", from TFA.

Sounds like a great idea, if implemented properly. My confidence in MS' ability to implement properly is not high.

Windows 11, codename: Tufnel

[Radical Moderate]

We can only hope.

Re:World's Best Malware

[Anonymous Coward]

tl;dr

New numeric base for MS

[Anonymous Coward]

MS decided to adopt base 9 with its upcoming windows 10 release that makes windows 10 the logical successor to windows 8. Expect windows calculator and MS office 10 to also adopt base 9 for their default operation.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[plopez]

Everyone knows it's Windows two....

I Miss...

[Anonymous Coward]

Monkey-Boy

It was an Executive Decision

[Anonymous Coward]

At Microsoft there are three types of executives: those who can count and those who can't.

Maybe it's me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart for the version bump hysteria, I don't get why they are still trying to unify the application platform across the whole range of devices. It didn't work out with windows 8 and I don't see why it should succeed with windows 10. I might be wrong but I don't see what desktop users (like me) have to gain from this approach. Conversely I see significant drawbacks in terms of usability.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[geekoid]

"What car would he have made Windows 8 in that analogy?"
I don't know, whats a really solid car the runs really well look innovative but people hate it because they hate change?

Oblig XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.xkcd.com/612/

ha

MS did this before with MS Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly, changing the version numbering doesn't actually make the product better. Who'd have guessed that?

Not Mozilla, apparently.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Mount St. Helens.

get ready for the pyroclastic flow of ones and zeros laying waste to every computer it touches

Windows has become irrelevant

[cjonslashdot]

They should just liquidate the company and give the money back to the shareholders. ;-) Oh wait, Michael Dell said that about Apple.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean Windex?

NO!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

They wouldn't be able to sell windows nine in Germany.

Meanwhile back in 2013 ...

[hvidstue]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2613504/microsoft-windows/microsoft-skips--too-good--windows-9--jumps-to-windows-10.html

From the article:

Apr 1, 2013
[This is an April Fool's story. It is fiction, not fact even though it contains facts. --Ed.]
If you've been looking forward to Windows 9, the OS that will fix what Windows 8 got wrong, you're in for a surprise: There will be no Windows 9. Instead, Microsoft announced it will proceed directly to Windows 10.

It seems that joke wasn't so far fetched yet ;-)

So . . . this is the year of the Linux Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Microsoft desktop is becoming more like the Linux desktop.

Good.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[philofaqs]

and how long would it be before someone called it wanx to much hilarity amongst pre teens and internet nerds ....

They have a clever strategy.

[Insomnium]

They want to remake the naming scheme. This one will be called "Windows X" (because it's cool). Next one will promise to be different and they will call it "Windows Y" (because changing things for no reason might work). And the version after that will be the ultimate version. "The Windows Y can't we make a decent OS".

Re:They have a clever strategy.

[Teresita]

You can get an ISO for a stripped down "Vista Lite" on TPB, so I imagine someone will offer Windows 10 without the bloat and call it Windows 9.

Neun.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know Germans actually have a word for the number nine? They won't get confused when they see "Windows 9" on the box and start saying "No".

(Well, they will now. "Wo ist neun?")

Its own worst enemy

[RightwingNutjob]

Microsoft's OS division must really have it in for those bastards at Microsoft's OS division. I don't think any serious software company out there competes with itself as badly as microsoft does.

Fuck the start menu.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd happily run Windows 7 or 8, or 10 (since apparently calling it Windows 9 is verboten)...except that I also like to run Linux on the same system. Previous to Windows 7 and UEFI that wasn't a problem, I'd just partition and dual boot...Microsoft isn't going to reverse course on their complete monopolization of your primary hard drive, so it's either buy a second one just to boot Linux off...or run Linux and give Microsoft the proverbial finger, since they've already flipped us the bird.

I really don't care whether or not the start menu is back, I would hope that they've cleared up some of the inconsistency in the interface (e.g. powering off your PC is considered a "setting" at this point, but not a setting in the traditional "control panel" sense of the word, and tiles...tiles fucking everywhere). On the other hand, if they're going to dictate what I can and cannot run on my own system...it doesn't matter what else they do with Windows, I just won't run it. I don't think mine is an unusual use case either, look up on any major Linux forum the issues people have just trying to _get_ the two to cooperate on the same system...it's easier to choose one or the other. I chose Linux for my desktop and a console for games.

Give me a better choice and I'll buy it, Microsoft. Gladly.

Re:Fuck the start menu.

[Anonymous Coward]

except that I also like to run Linux on the same system

Nothing's stopping you from running Windows, Linux or whatever else you want under virtualization under the host OS. Personally, I find it more useful to work with virtualized instances than dedicated hardware.

Re: Fuck the start menu.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there's plenty stopping me.

The only reason I'd run windows at this point is for games. All of the programs that I use for day to day stuff on my desktop PA are best run in Linux (kdenlive for video editing, lmms as a cheap fruityloops alternative, etc.) Some of these programs do have Windows ports, sure...problem is that most of them aren't very good (not the fault of microsoft, just been my experience).

Virtualize Windows in Linux is equally useless because you can't play any games that way. Maybe that will change but I highly doubt it.

Re:Fuck the start menu.

[exomondo]

Turn off SecureBoot then. When did the intelligence level of the slashdot audience drop to a point at which changing a BIOS setting ended up in the "too hard" basket? You can also still partition your hard drive and install the OSes side-by-side.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[tysonedwards]

Nissan Cube? Loved by a vocal minority, outside that group considered exceptionally stupid looking, boxy, and difficult to operate, and discontinued for 2015 citing poor sales?

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a wild guess here:
1. You run Apple
2. You're fucking old

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, because gasoline cars never catch on fire.

Prius still runs on gasoline, in case you forgot.

So no 7, 8, 9...

[TemporalBeing]

...as one G+ commentator put it, the old joke of "why is 6 afraid of 7? B/c 7 ate 9" won't be had for Windows. It'll probably still be true though that Win7 will fair better than Windows 10.

SILENCE SLASHDOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

SILEEEEEENCE! The great 4 digit is speaking! I present to you one of our oldest trolls, Gelfling. Please can we get a standing ovation? Even at 87 years old, he's still got what it takes!

I came here to say just that

[OneAhead]

It would be a tribute to the much-beloved X Windows, which was obviously their inspiration for introducing workspaces aka. virtual desktops.(*)

(*) Yeah, yeah, I know that this is a feature that is implemented in (most FOSS) window managers, and that X has nothing to do with it. The joke works better like this, OK? O yeah, and the part about X Windows being beloved was sarcasm.

Re: Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a wild guess here:

1) You're a virgin well past their prime
2) You'd like nothing better than a massive cock jammed up your ass but even the faggots won't touch you

Re:OMFG, stupid

[tehlinux]

They were in San Francisco.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

You are all insaine. Bottom line is I can do way more with a Windows based computer than any other computer. Get a mac for grandma, Linux for my 16 year old son and chrome device for my 17 year old daughter. I really don't know why everyone hates Microsoft so much? Jobs did more wrong things than Gates ever did. Gates has done more that all of apple put together. Microsoft has contributed more than any other business, they still own 95% of the market and they have great support, free services for education and I can customize the hell out of my windows machine... not to mention the amount of great games I don't have to emulate to get to work. Unlike Linux or apple, hey let's complicate deployments just because I want to be different and not like microsoft. And let's make dumb ass jokes about cars and versions. Really people? No wonder apple and Linux has its base with you guys. What a bunch of morons for a community. I'm shocked that the writers haven't posted an anti article on why the new mac os is so cool. It's all rigged. And you all buy in to it, apples cool u2 videos and free iTunes songs boy, what a reason to switch to an apple product. Linux with its closed secret, let's not say anything community and android with its Google crap.

Re:Wow

[exomondo]

Because they don't actually hate Microsoft, it's just something to complain about. If they really hated Microsoft they simply wouldn't use it and would instead advance desktop Linux operating systems. But look at the hundreds of comments any story about Microsoft gets (and just look, most of them are about the marketing of name of it) and then when there is a new Linux kernel version you see a dozen or so comments at best, very few people here care about technical details or being clever anymore, it's just trolls, flamebait and irrelevance.

This site used to be about technical details and hacks to make things work differently, now it's about complaining that the out-of-the-box experience isn't palatable to whichever audience it isn't palatable to (if it's too user-friendly then it's too power-user hostile and vice versa). Nevermind that the obvious solution to any geek or hacker for the Windows 8 Metro thing is to replace the shell with something like LiteStep or install Classic Shell and boot-to-desktop, if the out-of-the-box experience isn't what they want then they'll buy it anyway and complain about it rather than taking the initiative to make it work how they want.

Re:Dread/Weariness vs. Anticipation

[tehlinux]

TBF, they did acknowledge that the main concern they were hearing from enterprise customers was in training their users, so it's pretty safe to assume they'll make the learning curve as gentle as possible.

Consitantly inconsistent name/numbering

[RichMan]

So has Microsoft stuck with a naming convention for more than 2 releases?

Looking at the program loader days --
        Windows 1.0
        Windows 2.0
        Windows 3.x
        Windows 95
        Windows 98
        Windows ME
- not really. 1.0,2.0 3..... was close

Now the real OS lineup -
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.51
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 2000
Windows XP (full details)
Windows Server 2003
Windows Vista (full details)
Windows Server 2008
Windows 7 (full details)
Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows 8 (full details)
Windows Server 2012

I would give them points for server 2003,2008,2012 if they were not spinning Vista and 7,8 at the same time.

Going to have to say they were doing ok with the NT numbering, but we know NT was not done by real Microsoft People, when the Real Microsoft (tm) got ahold of it, it became WindowsXP.

Re:Consitantly inconsistent name/numbering

[Teresita]

Just because Windows 95 and up used MS-DOS as a loader doesn't mean they weren't real OS's, and even when I run Windows for Warehouses 3.11 and launch something like Wordstar in a DOS box it doesn't strike me like Windows itself just another DOS shell...

Skipping version 9 and going straight to ten

[Gumbercules!!]

I assume they saw how well skipping version numbers and going straight to ten worked out for Blackberry and wanted in on that action!

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't it be called "WinX"?

Nudge, nudge...

Seriously though, are they skipping 9 because they know about the "good release bad release cycle? If W7 was the least good release, and W8 was the dog, then 9 should have been the good version. Maybe they're jumping to 10 to avoid the pressure of having to make it good enough for people to want to use it.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[penguinoid]

I'm confused... does this mean I have to wait for Windows 11? Actually, never mind -- I don't mind waiting.

Re: OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Wind-x is a telnet client commonly used to run dos programs from ancient times for inventory management, billing, etc.

Microsoft would get their trademark infringing asses handed to them by either a glass cleaner or a dying computer sector.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[roc97007]

Yep, I think that nailed it.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[epyT-R]

There are far fewer teslas on the road.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

I suggest "Windows: Nemesis."

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

chevy volt-amp

Re:OMFG, stupid

[sillybilly]

Look at it from the bright side, at least it wasn't called Windows One.

Or Windows A in hex.

But bringing back classic things is a good move, but only if they can cut the code size too to classic codesizes. For instance I thoroughly despise dotnet and refuse to run it or anything dependent on it on any of my windows computers, but if they could cut the runtime size to 55 KB, I'd be like "Yay, dotnet! Gimme more of this lovely stuff!" But as long as the runtime is over 2 MB I'm treating it like an infection plague and not willing to touch it with a 10 foot stick.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[sillybilly]

I install the two recovery DVD's full of garbage software crap on this HP Mini 200 or 210 Netbook, uninstall garbage crap, the whole process taking like 8-9 hrs, then switch to Linux, erase system volume information, recycled and the like, replace Program Files/Internet Explorer folder with a blank file so no folder of the same name can be recreated, and the like, media player, etc, all the snooping spyware crap that comes built in with Windows, then back up all the files from C drive. The next reinstal of this stripped down system, via a simple linux file copy takes like 15 minutes instead of 9 hours. Oh and I use Lighthouse Puppy 4.1.2rc1 for this. Yes, rc1, because as soon as I started using it, the project was hijacked by impostors, and even rc2 was crap. And the latest puppy linuxes named Lupu, Wary, Quirky are downright mocking in their names, so obviously the project is hijacked, you can tell simply by the shit smeared names they give their releases.

joke

[Anonymous Coward]

joke:
How many Microsoft executives does it take to count to 10?

Ha! Trick question: Microsoft executives cannot count to 10.

Joke:
Why can't Johnnie do math?

Common Core Math curriculum was created by Microsoft executive: 8+1=10.

Joke:
Why are no women surprised that Windows 10 comes after Windows 8?

From adolescence on, women are told that 3+1=10, etc.

Joke:
How much red wine does it take to make it funny that Microsoft will go from Windows 8 to Windows 10?

Don't know yet.

Joke:

Aren't you glad Satya Nadella is now CEO at Microsoft?

No, no, no, and NO!

[msobkow]

Recently I was having trouble with my Debian box, an old 3.8GHz single core creaker. So I shifted my emails, my personal data, and my development tasks over to run on my Windows 7 laptop.

That was two weeks ago to the *day*. Today I had to do a system restore because some drive by hit it (even with Adblock Plus running, as well as firewalls, anti-virus, and a hardware firewall.) My folk's Windows 8 system got hit twice, and the 8.1 upgrade has been hit once -- and they don't *do* surfing, other than a half dozen reputable websites, and their email and games. So they are *not* going to porn sites or anyplace else famous for infections.

Today I was so frosted over the drive-by forcing me to waste an hour recovering the machine that I took another stab at addressing the overheating CPU on my Linux creaker, and discovered I could unclip the fan from the CPU cooler so I could clean out the cooler fins *properly.* That box is over 10 years old now, and since I switched to Linux, it's been disabled exactly ONCE -- and that because Ubuntu's upgrade process couldn't deal with a running DB/2 UDB instance in the startup scripts and crapped out *horribly*, leaving the box corrupt (I've been on Debian since.)

Windows?

I don't give a rat's fat ass what version number MicroSquishy uses. Windows is CRAPWARE and there is no way on Earth I will EVER use a Windows box as a general surfing platform again. Running builds and compiles in a restricted environment? Playing music? Sure.

But let it loose on the Internet again? Never. Ever. EVER.

Re:No, no, no, and NO!

[msobkow]

If I didn't need that Windows boot to run Oracle and Sybase ASE, that box would have been reformatted and reinstalled with Debian or Ubuntu this afternoon.

FUCK Windows.

Re: World's Best Malware

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised it didn't start talking about my clean PC

Re: OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

2MB, oh no! Better not install 500 programs, that will take up a whole gigabyte!

Re: OMFG, stupid

[sillybilly]

I never ever had 500 custom programs installed on my computer. That's just stupid. Imagine what your start menu would look like. And 2 MB is barely tolerable, like bleh, I really want a 55 KB dotnet runtime to be excited about dotnet.

Clearly MS has been learning from past mistakes...

[dermoth666]

So they figured they always end up botching every other release, so why not throw away Windows 9 before development even started and go straight to Windows 10?

Version Number Likeness

[hound3000]

Winamp took v2 and v3, added them together, went to v5.

In the original browser wars, Netscape was commonly pitted against the like major version number of Internet Explorer. Nowadays Firefox has adopted the fast-track approach of version numbering from Google Chrome.

With Windows 10, Microsoft is matching MacOS X, and it will create discussion of which is better as it always does when it releases. Then Microsoft will push quickly to Windows 11, and not plod around with 10.1, 10.2, 10.3. In three years time, look to see Mac OS start pushing it numbers faster in response. Both are positing a push away from the 'old desktop mentality.' The name has been a marketing ploy since Windows 95, why should we expect any difference now?

The version I'm usually the most interested in seeing is the one listed as the NT Kernel number displayed in the command prompt. //Even Linux had 3.11 for Workgroups.

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[z0idberg]

I highly doubt Tim Cook is posting on here as "Rivaldy".

Not a stable version from MS though

[dbIII]

There was a Matrox virtual desktop thing from years back that was decent too, and I've seen an Nvidia one. However saying "that feature has been in windows" is like saying photoshop has been in windows :)
There was a "powertoy" but it wasn't able to run reliably as the MS Windows environment changed - a 100% chance of bluescreen per day.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

According to inside sources, Ballmer wanted to call it Hairy Balls Plopped Menacingly On A Table, but Nadella ruined everything when he changed the name to Windows 10.

Still have a boxed copy of Windows 2.0

[astro]

Before Windows 3.1, most computers with a GUI that I used were running CDE. Mostly Sun workstations, but also a few Alpha and AIX boxes. And one SGI running IRIX. My first home computer with a GUI was Slackware Linux with FVWM. Unless you count the GEM desktop on a C64.

Windows WFW 3.11 - was pretty ok. First version of Windows I used daily. There were lots of useful, or perhaps too many necessary, hacks in the early days of the internet.

Windows 95 was, in my opinion, pretty cool, and obviously was a real game-changer in terms of UI.

Windows ME was a horrible aberration. Garbage. I only experienced it on friends-and-family computers I would get summoned to "repair". Usually pre-installed by HP on the horrible boxes they were selling at the time. Note: HP did, in my mind, redeem themselves years later and resume making real computers.

I worked with Windows NT 3.51 and 4 a bit at various workplaces, but for server OS, almost everything was already Linux even at that time (1999-2002 time frame).

Windows 2000 was fantastic. Rock-solid. I never ran XP at home, just stuck with 2000 because there was no compelling reason to "upgrade". For a home and small business OS, I really think MS nailed it with 2000.

Windows Vista took more of a beating than it deserved. I ran it at home for a couple of years and had no real complaints other than the UI was pretty ugly a lot of the time.

Windows 7 was and still is fantastic. I love it. My computer does exactly everything I need it to do, and is crazy stable. Less crashes than even with 2000, which almost never crashed ever, anyway. I really do love Windows 7. Currently in my house we have Macs running Mavericks, my Win 7 box, and I boot to Manjaro Linux on occasion to get some work done that I just don't find practical under Windows because I never learned Powershell.

I tried Windows 8.0 for a while and was absolutely shocked at what a disaster it was. Just unbelievable. I never tried 8.1, which I understand fixed things considerably, but as I said, I love Win 7 and like with the 2000 -> XP shift, see no compelling reason to upgrade.

I am honestly intrigued by Windows 10 and will give it a spin when the preview is actually available, so perhaps even later today.

(Can't believe I am bothering to post this)

Re:Still have a boxed copy of Windows 2.0

[astro]

I actually have always felt I kinda missed out in that I never used OS/2 - a friend of mine at the time had a box running Warp; I think I clicked on it maybe three times, ever.

Re:Still have a boxed copy of Windows 2.0

[astro]

BTW, I created my /. account in 1996 in Mosaic on a DEC Alpha also running Slackware Linux.

Re:Still have a boxed copy of Windows 2.0

[WuphonsReach]

OS/2 Warp was pretty good for the time (93-96 era). I ran OS/2 2.x and 3.x for a long while as my main operating system. But application selection was really limited, and running 16-bit Windows programs only got you so far.

Not having to reboot for weeks at a time was a very nice feature. This was back when Win95 could only run for about 40-some hours before crashing due to an overflow in a counter.

But there were no open-source development tools at the time, so in order to write OS/2 applications you had to pony up a few hundred dollars for the compiler, then more money for a GUI framework library, plus more money for documentation. That, I feel, was IBM's biggest mistake - charging for development tools. But then, this was the days when a 28k modem was high-speed and ISDN 128k lines were popular - so not sure how they would have distributed it.

Linux was still a minor blip at the time (I installed an early version of Red Hat in the late 90s).

An Exchange aside

[dbIII]

While you're there, make it a free feature to put a corporate signature in Exchange without poncing about with transport rules and copying files down to clients. 20 years and we still don't have the SIMPLEST of things done right.

Putting the MS Exchange collection behind a purpose designed MTA (sendmail, exim, cast of thousands) and getting that to add the signature is the easiest way to do it - bonus points if it's used to hold and scan mail for virus or spam before it can put any load on MS Exchange and make the fragile thing fall over.

Video wallpaper from the 90's!

[dbIII]

Funny thing is back around 1998, when the students were away I'd run the "atlantis" screensaver as the animated background of my cheap little linux box with all the grunt work being done by a big SGI machine in the next building. Install a version of X11 on your MS box (xwin32 etc) and you can have a video background and party like it's 1999!
I'm sure there's other ways already build into the desktop background changer of win7.

Next one?

[hcs_$reboot]

Windows 12, Windows 20, Windows 10S, Windows 10.1 ?

Doesn't look much better

[Anonymous Coward]

They may have partially fixed the start menu, but it still has the annoying tiles, windows store, and a bizarre mixture of tablet and desktop features.
Microsoft needs to realise that desktop computers are not tablets, and they need to have two separate versions of Windows that are oriented towards the tasks they actually will perform. This means different APIs for user interfaces, and a common set of APIs for the underlying implementation.
The current Windows approach looks like it would only be at home on some bizarre Frankenstein creation like the Microsoft Surface, which is neither good as a tablet, nor as a desktop. Quite obviously you can't make an operating system that is unified, and good for both purposes - they have quite a different UX.
There is clearly no point developing a mobile version of Windows now anyway. Android and iOS already dominate that market. Microsoft is just wasting the money of the few users that will buy their mobile product by creating it. Instead, it would be in their best business interests to focus on supporting legacy users of Windows/Office/Sharepoint, and developing new Android based software for mobile devices. I'd also like to see Microsoft begin to standardise on more portable APIs. I don't intend to bet any of my company's software on Windows only APIs any more, and I don't think anyone else sensible would either. Microsoft should sponsor a project like Qt, which delivers good cross platform APIs - much nicer than anything to ever originate from their own development. Non-portable software is a sign of incompetence. We now have sufficient hardware resources to provide all the necessary abstraction to allow a mostly unified code base across platforms. There is simply no excuse for expensive lockin to another company's products.

When all else fails

[Anonymous Coward]

When the going gets tough at Microsoft, they fall back on their oldest practices.

C:\WINDOWS>copy Apple

Re:When all else fails

[macs4all]

When the going gets tough at Microsoft, they fall back on their oldest practices.

C:\WINDOWS>copy Apple

Redmond, Start Your Copiers!

A taskbar update & Linux-style desktops

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Microsoft's answer to the Apple iPhone 6 release? It's positively surreal! Juxtaposing a video of the two events side by side, one couldn't be faulted for thinking the videos are from separate decades rather than separated by a couple of weeks. And what some journalists saw yesterday is still over 1+ year(s) away? Micro$oft is clearly the Exxon-Valdez of the IT world, with the crash imminent. The Ballmer\Sinofsky tag team were kept at the helm for far too long. 18K have been let go this year; 18K+ will be gone next year too if this is all they can muster, after having spent billions to date on this steaming pile. This is getting embarrassing...

Here's a truthism: Windows will NEVER be unified across all devices, simply because their own marketing insist on either crippling products from working on all versions, or crippling the OSes from running all applications. Cases in point: try to install any of their server applications (Exchange, SQL Server, AD etc) on Windows 7.

Then you don't like BarbaraHudson

[Anonymous Coward]

"HOWTO: trolling the hosts file guy in one easy step The next time you see a post by him, just reply anonymously. And to really mess with his head, reply anonymously to your anonymous post, disagreeing with your first anon post (extra points if you claim in the second post that you're him - that REALLY sets him off)." - by tomhudson (43916) barbara.hudson@ ... a - h u dson.com on Saturday April 16, 2011 @01:38PM (#35841122) Journal

BarbaraHudson = Count Stalkula quoted from http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Windows 2

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_joke#Jokes_with_numeral_bases

Using open source methods of development now....

[roger_that]

I was surprised to see that they are using the open source method of developing software now, relying on lots of eyeballs to find bugs. They can't call it open source development, so it's an Open Beta, but it looks an awful lot like the open source method to me.

Viruses

[Anonymous Coward]

From Microsoft's blog, Windows 10 will have different user interfaces for different devices. But won't having the same underlying operating system now be a field day for virus writers? With one codebase on PC's, servers, tablets, and phones, the same virus can infect everything running Windows 10. Despite the increased safety measures built into Windows 8, I have still seen some horrible viruses there. So a common codebase may be a good thing for Microsoft but a bad thing for consumers.

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[jonhorvath]

Was that Bill O'Reilly?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Re:Need to see how to get in the Windows Insider P

[Sun]

I will help you out. I'm sure it's going to be a huge improvement over Windows 8.

Shachar

No, Marketing

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

Engineers have no problem understanding the old code versions. Windows 3.0 was a major upgrade from 2.0 whereas 3.1 was a minor upgrade and 3.11 was pretty much less than even a "service patch".

Consumers found it confusing so most companies got away from it. Microsoft uses the old naming scheme for the NT kernel but uses the consumer naming scheme for the average schmoe.

The actual kernel has only had one major upgrade since Windows 2000, which was Vista (6.0). The purpose is to let Microsoft engineers and other professionals know what version they are using (for instance, Windows 2012 and Windows 8 are both 6.2) and how extensively different the operating system is.

The actual names since the introduction of Windows 2000 are just marketing. This is common in software development, to have an internal version number separate from the marketing name.

Shades of Ubuntu Unity and GNOME and KDE

[lsatenstein]

Immitation by Microsoft is the greatest form of flattery. If they would like a good interface for Windows 10, they have three such examples from which to choose. They will be about 2 years behind and when they catch up, they will again be two years behind.

But, if they arrive with a good product, then the Desktop Linux will be history. On the North American continent, Linux Desktop is for the most part, a hobby system.
I write that because the BigBox stores do not sell Linux based systems other than Android, and there is no retail Linux system with long term support.

One cannot provide or discuss codecs and a bunch of software that is permissible if you reside within North America. We have to go offshore to download superb Linux desktop software because of the North American patent laws.

There are countries (eg Russia, et al) who do not allow or recognize software patents. They do recognize copyrights, so the question is, is there much difference between the copyright and the license for the end-user?

 

Re:OMFG, stupid

[cthulhu11]

They already did. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Re:OMFG, stupid

[viperidaenz]

I'm not the one who made the comparison between an electric car and a hybrid.

So many possibilities

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft went from version numbers (3 to 3.1) to years (95 to 98 to Millennium) to names (eXPerience, Vista) to numbers (7, 8, 8.1).

They might be continuing the loop, and going back to years. (That might imply that we get stuck with Windows 8 until the year xx10, which would be 2110).

I know the Slashdot article says "t-e-n", but I want a source. Another possibility is that after going from 3 to 98 to 2000 to 7, and going from 360 to 1 (for the Xbox variations of the Microsoft operating systems), they're dropping down to 2. But they're also deciding on a new trend: rather than years and names, they're going with binary.

Or they might have Apple Envy. After all, Word 6.0 for Windows did not come after Word 5.0; it came after Word 2.0. The reason was just to catch up to competitors. Similarly, they named MS-DOS version 6.2 that in order to leap-frog IBM PC-DOS 6.1 (which was just as guilty-- IBM PC-DOS went from 5.0 to 6.1 in order to leap-frog MS-DOS 6.0). Microsoft might not want to look like they are playing catch up with MacOS 9. They want to get at least up to version X.

Or, Microsoft might just be misleading people as they really intend to release Windows 8.1 Service Pack, and they're getting everybody hyped up before they drop the bombshell... "All those kewl things you were expecting are part of a Windows 8 product."

Re:OMFG, stupid

[macs4all]

Shouldn't it be called "WinX"?

Then, we'd know it was on par and lock step with Apple's OS going forward.

;)

Don't laugh, that's exactly what they are trying to mimic.

The funniest part

[Anonymous Coward]

I see that the parent post got points for being funny.

The funniest part was definitely this statement:

After all, 8 worked out pretty well

Microsoft's Multi-platform support 2 decades late

[Helldesk Hound]

Specific versions of Linux has been available for multiple platforms for how many decades now? Does Microsoft consider that they're "innovating" by doing this?

Platform unification is great.

[Asterisk]

I wonder when Mitsubishi will announce a unified UI for their cars, trucks, locomotives, aircraft, and ships. These are all vehicles, after all, so it only makes sense that they should all be controlled via the exact same frontend.

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Optali]

Or take place names of good old Europe such as: Windows Abcecoude (I swear that's a place) or Windows Urk !!!

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Optali]

Napalm!!!

Re:OMFG, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Baby seal livers

YES! Musk is THAT evil!!

Re:Need to see how to get in the Windows Insider P

[Anonymous Coward]

so still only 50 years before Linux will be ready then?

What about my Windows 9 free upgrade?

[lagi]

Oh, Oh! I get it now. I will have my free Windows 9 upgrade, not a real Windows it appears, than i'll have to buy Windows 10. have the feeling I will ending up installed gentoo on my laptop as well.

Kudos!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my favorite Onion pieces! Nice adaptation!

No streaks!

[DarthVain]

Would give new meaning to "Clean Install"!

Also probably a joke in here about Aero and Transparency or something but I can't see it :)

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[Anonymous Coward]

If this doesn't look familiar, you may want to read this:
http://www.theonion.com/articl...

Re:Microsoft skips 'too good' Windows 9, jumps to

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's because Apple have OS-X (10.x), they figured they were close enough that they could just jump on the ten bandwagon of awesomeness.