On name changes in the Insider program, optional updates, and Windows in general

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Rant: The hallmark of a good product numbering scheme is that you set it once and forget it. Internal code names can run all over the Iron Pyrite map.
[See the full post at: On name changes in the Insider program, optional updates, and Windows in general]

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doriel, lmacri, Nibbled To Death By Ducks, Mr. Natural, lurks about, abbodi86, GreatAndPowerfulTech

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woody wrote:

It’s insane that the XP-era Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2004 arrived seven years – and a half dozen versions – apart.

I can’t understand this sentence.

Was there really a “Windows Server 2004”? Released in 2010?

Windows 11 Pro version 22H2 build 22621.1778 + Microsoft 365 + Edge

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woody

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OOOOOOPS.

My mental calculator just dropped a “1.”

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b

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> I can’t understand this sentence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLZubB22edw

Forget it, he’s rolling…

Boon
Animal House (1978)

🙂

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woody

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woody, check out this reaction from Ed Bott’s recent ZDNet article beginning with the sentence > “Microsoft, stop feeding bugs to a billion Windows 10 users.”

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-stop-feeding-bugs-to-a-billion-windows-10-users-heres-how/

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woody

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Ed missed the most important point. It is not the ‘channels’ or the release cadence per se but the lack of a proper QA department. Many of these bugs would be caught with proper testing procedures. Yes it might be tedious to test various printers and printer configurations but you do not want to give people a reason to leave.

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alQamar, ryegrass, gkarasik

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Bravo, Ed!

Maybe Microsoft will listen to him.

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The Windows Server 2004 comment cracked me up.

I will just say that I don’t like Microsoft’s version numbering scheme for Windows 10. Android uses straight numbers (7, 8, 9). macOS uses straight numbers prefixed with 10 (10.13, 10.14, 10.15). Linux Mint uses straight numbers for major releases (17, 18, 19) and decimals for more minor updates to those releases (17.1, 18.2, 19.3).

The advantage with this numbering scheme is that the numbers will never collide with each other and are “timeless”.

Microsoft’s version numbering scheme for Windows 10, YYMM, is not timeless, given how Microsoft has named products after the year they were released in, like Windows Server. They should’ve seen the confusion and absurdities that would ensue once the world got into the 2020s.

A better versioning scheme would be to do decimals or something. Rather than “Windows 10 Version 1909” and “Windows 10 Version 2004” (which is just way too long), Microsoft should have just gone with decimals of 10 instead, like “Windows 10.1”, “Windows 10.2”, etc. Such a naming scheme would be timeless, unique, and much easier to write than “Windows 10 Version XXXX”.

It would certainly make it easier to keep track of how far we’ve gone, and make it easier for software developers to keep track of compatibility with different versions of Windows 10. I’m willing to bet that some programs that worked with the first release of Windows 10 don’t work in the current release. Rather than writing “Compatible with Windows 10” (and leave people using an older version frustrated when it doesn’t work), developers could write “Compatible with Windows 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8”, rather than “Compatible with Windows 10 versions 1903, 1909, 2004”.

Windows had once gotten along with clearly distinctive version numbers, such that developers would know if you were running Windows XP or Windows Vista or Windows 7 or still using Windows 2000. They would be able to figure out how things looked on your end and find ways to troubleshoot your issue. When buying software, the box would clearly be labelled with which versions of Windows the program was tested to work with. With Windows 10, this distinction still exists, but is immensely more frustrating, and it doesn’t look like everyone has fully understood that not all versions of Windows 10 are created equal. It should be addressed.

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doriel, alQamar

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From now on, it will Version xxH1 and xxH2

so it’s a progress

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woody

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.. but only internally. That, and “Iron” and “Vibranium” will remain completely obscure to normal people.

It shoulda been 10.1, 10.2, 10.3. But I’ve been saying that for six years….

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abbodi86, alQamar

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Don’t bet on it Woody.

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woody, alQamar

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[alQamar]

anonymous wrote:

Microsoft’s version numbering scheme for Windows 10, YYMM, is not timeless, given how Microsoft has named products after the year they were released in, like Windows Server. They should’ve seen the confusion and absurdities that would ensue once the world got into the 2020s. A better versioning scheme would be to do decimals or something. Rather than “Windows 10 Version 1909” and “Windows 10 Version 2004” (which is just way too long), Microsoft should have just gone with decimals of 10 instead, like “Windows 10.1”, “Windows 10.2”, etc. Such a naming scheme would be timeless, unique, and much easier to write than “Windows 10 Version XXXX”.

Absolutely. Microsoft had the opportunity long enough to use their version codes. And sad enough you still need them for WMI calls as their product strings got changed inconsistently too sometimes including ® or not or Windows Server or just Server. It’s a horrific mess if you look closely.

5.1 = XP / 2003
6.0 Vista / 2008
6.1 7 / 2008R2
6.2 8 / 2012
6.3 8.1 / 2012 R2 etc

I don’t expect they will follow the scheme of Google, Linux, Apple.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by alQamar.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Bluetrix.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Bluetrix.

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doriel

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[doriel]

Interesting is, that from Win8, version is still 6.3

BTW “windows version” is written in the registry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion

You can even change the value manually, so remote registry query returns different value! Like I did here for testing purposes:

I used my network mapping tool to scan multiple computers at the same time.

PS – I get lost in MSFT terminology long time ago. My opinion is, that it is too complicated even for some IT people. Who has time to go through all this in the real life?
Also, isnt more easy to have testing team, than maintain 27 release rings, 4 patch tuesdays, 34 Windows versions and 91 versions of Microsoft office? 😉
Isnt it more elegant to have one functional thing and maintain it?

Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 20H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by doriel.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by doriel. Reason: oh grammar
• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by doriel.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by doriel. Reason: spelling errors

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alQamar

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In all of this, a significant problem seems to be that the the marketing people are driving the communications.  Renames and token reworks seem to be driven by how they want to get their message across, not what necessarily serves customers (especially customers that ask nosy and inconvenient questions).

A similar rant is in how Microsoft continually recycles product names.  Outlook and Outlook Express was one good example of using virtually the same name for two products that were only marginally related.  And now Outlook.com for Microsoft’s email structure (after all the noise made about various Live-branded components). Or “Windows Defender” which was entirely different in Windows 7 than the product with the same name in Windows 10.

Something that’s also amusing is if you take a look at older releases of Windows (especially on a fresh install), where Microsoft was pushing something really hard at the time of initial release, but over the course of a few years lost interest entirely, or much lower emphasis. In the current era, Cortana comes to mind. When it first released, Cortana was supposed to be a competitor to Siri, Alexa and Hey Google, and now (fortunately) it’s pretty muted, unless you’re interacting through Office 365 (or now, Microsoft 365).

For whatever Microsoft is announcing now, give it a year or 18 months, and they’ll be announcing similar changes, when the marketers decide that the changes made this time around aren’t really getting through.

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doriel, alQamar, Cybertooth

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Dear askwoody Readers,

I don’t usually do this but with the recent developments and replies from MSFT I reached a point of not saying “all good” and eat all the dogfood (not vegan anyway).

This is how it started 2 hours ago on twitter.

„Thanks for the feedback. Windows has recently changed their Insider channel names, which are now similar to the ones used across the Office Insider program.”

 There is a lot of tiredness about the ongoing renaming things. Even MVPs are making fun of this and some say loud and clear „Stop renaming“.

I am working as an Consultant and not only concepts are getting invalid by the changes all the time but everyone gets just confused.

Every few months we have to deal with new ADMX templates for Office, Windows, Onedrive, Teams, not all of them being even available in one single package.

Some of these aren’t optional but give companies tools to iron out panicked decisions, without deploying the 2341 registry and scripted workaroud.

Fiddling with XML files from config.office.com because they wanna release a bing non opt out, then change their mind because of public flak.

Deploying Teams as auto start per user without admin consent, giving options later via ADMX to remove it, while celebrating „most active users over slack“.

Surely counted every day companies Teams clients unused unmanaged in autostart, every day. Because some admins don’t have time to read twitter, blogs and reddit but have a life.

Not even do they have the same consistent file and folder structure. I am not whining. But shattered about ever optimistic marketing.

Not posting this to promote myself – that’s not me, if you can spare some more of your lifetime on this topic leave some likes over there and comments from your

Constructively personal real life experience about what their actions mean to you, if it means something at all.

Some have to redo their scripts and logics, processes, deployments, after all test all the changes done. Some even have to follow complex change processes.

 

This all happened and happens still. This is not what the linked comment is about. It is about their channel naming and a plea for consistency.

 

I would be glad for likes on this article I crashed my head now for too long hours just because getting a wild tweet from the social media team that really break the glass. See top.
Wasn’t sure if I just silently ignore it, but I could not.

 

Hope you understand the relation between our daily struggles with patching and keeping everything running and this post – which should be – but do not blog.

 

https://t.co/FDBcxK40Hf?amp=1

Thanks for your support! The naming needs to have a (good) end. Hope you share my ideas and the pain points.

Mind that before they did the renaming for Office some even had side effects on loading wrong packages from the CDN and they have not changed anything.
Wasn’t intended, still rolled out other editions of Office to the users. I think Rafael Riviera was posting this back then.
So after all my pamphlet is not just about cosmetical issues 😊

Best Regards,
Karl Wester-Ebbinghaus
@tweet_alqamar

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wavy, doriel, AlexEiffel, woody, Mr. Natural, abbodi86

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From a security standpoint, how can you secure an OS with all of these monthly new “features”.

Red Ruffnsore

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doriel, AlexEiffel

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Mr. Natural wrote:

From a security standpoint, how can you secure an OS with all of these monthly new “features”.

easy to answer: there are no monthly new features. There are monthly fixes and once in a year new features for all and now another time of the years new features targeted to business.

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