Why did Microsoft skip
directly from Windows 8 (or more precisely, Windows 8.1) directly to Windows 10
instead of going to Windows 9? Deeming Windows 9 'too
good to release,' Microsoft execs shelve follow-up to Windows
8 and proceed to Windows 10. Recently, Microsoft publicly
made the first steps to doing just that, with Windows 10. Skipping the Windows
9 name entirely, Microsoft has now confirmed that the
new version of Windows is not Windows 9 as everyone expected, but
Windows 10.
Here is a brief
interview with the Microsoft Windows Marketing Boss, Tony Prophet:
Today,
we have Windows 8.1. The next
version of Windows is on its way: Windows 10.
So,
what happened to Windows 9?
"It
came and it went," said new Microsoft Windows marketing boss Tony Prophet
on Monday on stage at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. He was
quoting Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella who has been answering that question much
the same way.
Microsoft
doesn't want people to associate the next version of Windows with the unpopular
Windows 8.
"Windows
10 is not going to be an incremental step from Window 8.1," he explained.
"Windows 10 is going to be a material step. We're trying to create
one platform, one eco-system that unites as many of the devices from the small
embedded Internet of Things, through tablets, through phones, through PCs and,
ultimately, into the Xbox."
Even
the way Microsoft is building Windows 10 is different.
Microsoft
is letting people try it way earlier in the development process than ever
before, with a new version it calls The Technology Preview.
The
Windows 10 Tech Preview version was released two weeks ago and has already been
downloaded 1 million times, he said.
Microsoft
also did exhaustive testing for Windows 8 before releasing it, 1.24 billion
hours. It's just that the Windows team famously didn't
listen to the feedback they were getting about how clunky it was to use.
Pundits were even
calling Windows 8 another Vista months before it even shipped.
But
Prophet says Microsoft won't make the same mistake.
"The
reason we're doing that is so we can listen to our customers," he says,
particularly enterprise users.
That's
also different. They were pretty much ignored by Windows 8, which was all about
a touch screen for tablets. Many enterprises responded by ignoring Windows 8.
They've been upgrading from XP to Windows 7.
"Our
objective with Windows 10 is ... to build absolutely the best OS for the
enterprise. That's the early focus," Prophet said. "We've got the
process. We've got a million people using it. And we're listening."
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