Microsoft Windows Boss Elaborates on Decision to Skip Windows 9

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Toe the company line

Somewhere out there is a hidden warehouse filled with missing software. In it you'll find such titles as Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies, Ultima X: Odyssey, and Windows 9. The location will remain a mystery until the end of time, though the decision to fill it with certain pieces of software is more readily known. With regards to Windows 9, Microsoft's Tony Prophet shared some additional details about the decision to skip it and go straight to Windows 10.
Quoting Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Prophet took to the stage at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco and said simply, "It came and it went." That's really the only explanation anyone needs, though Prophet offered up some additional insight into the matter.
"Windows 10 is not going to be an incremental step from Window 8.1," Prophet said, according to The Times of India. "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."
Microsoft doesn't want anyone associating Windows 10 with Windows 8/8.1. One of the keys to getting it right this time around is allowing users to try out the OS much earlier in the development process than before. The stated goal of the Windows 10 Technical Preview is to collect feedback.
"The reason we're doing that is so we can listen to our customers," Prophet says, adding that Microsoft is especially interested in what enterprise customers have to say.
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