What’s in a Name? (Premium)

As Windows enthusiasts, we often waste time thinking about—and debating—the relative merits of Microsoft’s brand names and product versioning.

I’m as guilty as any of you in this regard. And with over 20 years of experiencing dealing with Microsoft and its ever-shifting whims, I’m perhaps as battle-weary as anyone out there as well. Scarred by Windows Vista, you say? That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Let me introduce you to Windows Millennium Edition. And Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Windows for Pen anyone?

We could spend hours on this stuff.

The move from version numbers—3, 3.1 and 3.11—to year numbers—95, 98, 2000—to aspirational names like XP and Vista. And then back to pseudo version numbers like 7 and 8, which were actually versions 6.1 and 6.2, as it turns out. Because Microsoft.

How minor versions of Windows—like 3.1, 3.11, and 8.1—were actually major releases. How things that weren’t really even Windows “versions” per se—like Windows 95 SR2 (Service Release 2) and Windows XP with Service Pack 2—were, in fact, major new Windows versions.

How Windows XP was split up, expanded, and niche-marketed into versions for Media Center, Tablet PC, Starter and more. And then all consolidated back again into fewer core SKUs in subsequent product versions.

How antitrust issues drove the creation of such unnecessary things as Windows N (as in “Nobody will want this”) and Windows K (as in “Nobody will want this either, K?”). That we are still stuck with. For some reason.

We could talk codenames, like Neptune, Memphis, and Longhorn, all of which were more interesting than the resulting products, not to mention the resulting product versions.

We could talk about the divided and then finally united development strategies of the MS-DOS-based Windows versions and the NT-based Windows versions. About the rise of cross-platform compatibility with Windows NT, about its eventual death to focus on x86, and about its eventual rebirth with the rise of ARM and mobile.

And all that would be fun. In fact, I’m perhaps a bit too into this stuff. A bit too… experienced. The history of this stuff weighs on you after a while. It becomes a blur.

What I’m most interested in, ultimately, is clarity. That we collectively are able to refer to some Windows version and understand immediately what it is.

Windows versions like 95, 98, and 2000 are somewhat clear in that bigger numbers are newer, and those numbers equate to years. But there are issues with such names. Unlike cars, there was never a new version of Windows each year, so someone still running Windows 95 in 1997 might feel that they’re out-of-date. And Windows 2000 was based on Windows NT, whereas Windows 95 and 98 were not. Confusing.

Aspirational names like XP and Vista are dumb on many levels—XP, vaguely, was about “experiences”—but you had to be a real insider to understand how these versions related, in time, to the year number versions that came before them and then more traditionally-versions products that have come since. That Windows 7 is newer than Windows Vista is not obvious to anyone normal.

In more recent years, the push to simpler, version-based names like 7, 8, and 10—as inaccurate as they are—has been nice. It is obvious to anyone that Windows 8 is newer than Windows 7, and while you and I can giggle over those products’ real version numbers, whatever. It’s no less stupid than using the Start button to shut down Windows. In fact, it’s in keeping with what we should acknowledge is now a rich history.

With Windows 10, of course, Microsoft is promoting the notion that this is the “final” version of Windows, and that there will be no Windows 11 as a result. While I fully expect them to renege on that promise as those shifting branding attitudes shift yet again, the fact remains that this notion is a lie. There have already been threeWindows 10 product versions—Windows 10 versions 1507, 1511, and 1607—and a fourth is due in a month or two. There’s Microsoft’s rich history at work, again. You can almost see the burden.

When Microsoft announced its plans for Windows 10—skipping over the Windows 9 name, another rich example of this company’s scattered thinking in action—I argued that the firm should simply call this thing “Windows.” It was the final version, after all. Pull an Apple already.

They may get there. But you know what? It doesn’t matter.

Because Windows 10 is always kept up-to-date thanks to an “evergreen” product update strategy that remains controversial—anyone who buys a Windows 10-based PC will effectively always have the latest version. That’s neat. And it sort of removes the need to know which thing is newer. You’re always on that newer thing.

And businesses and technical people who care about such things know that Windows 10 version 1703 is newer than version 1607, or whatever, because bigger numbers are newer and—insider tidibt!—those numbers are dates. Microsoft has it both ways, now: Version numbers and dates! Genius, really.

Somewhere in the future, however, Microsoft will not support every single version of Windows 10, of course. And then some fragmentation will occur. And who knows? Maybe Microsoft will be inspired to “take Windows to 11” or whatever.

I don’t care what they do. As long as it makes sense.

And I’m only talking Windows here. Microsoft’s other product lines have their own silly naming/branding/versioning issues too. One of the worst offenders is Xbox, which gives its major updates non-specific names like “Spring Update” or “November Update” without any time-based context. (“November 2016 Update,” for example. Too obvious?)

That kind of makes me crazy. By comparison, Windows has been an island of logic and common sense. Incredible, when you really think about it.