• herrcaptain
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    3 months ago

    At least with jumping from Windows 8 to Windows 10 there was a realistic reason for it. I don’t remember the specifics but it was to reduce the risk of breaking third-party software coded with some janky way of determining Windows versions.

    The rest of the naming jumps, I’m sure, were just the whims of whoever was in charge of the project at that time.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
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      3 months ago

      It mostly comes down to marketing reasons I assume. Me was marketed as in “Me”, the computer for personal usage. The second Xbox could not be named Xbox 2, because as we all know the 2 is less than the 3 in Playstation 3, and bigger number is better number, so it was named 360.

    • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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      3 months ago

      I don’t remember the specifics but it was to reduce the risk of breaking third-party software coded with some janky way of determining Windows versions.

      Probably lazy detection for windows 95/98… The 9 might get parsed for those much older OSes…I know many apps were compatible with both 95, and 98… So they might just do a lazy check that 9 exists and call that “compatible”. When a windows 10 named 9 might not necessarily be.

      However, knowing how much old shit is still compatible in Windows, I’m not sure this would have been that much of an issue.

      • herrcaptain
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        3 months ago

        That’s more or less what I remember of their rationale as well. Apparently it was common enough that they legit considered it a potential problem.