Apple also didn't make an iPhone 2. It only made a 3G version, then Apple decided the 3 should stand for generation.
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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Windows skipped 9 because many applications had 9x to refer to Windows 95 and 98.
There is no 9 because 7 8 9.
Thanks for being here for us.
Newer software aimed at newer Windows versions usually had a code that checked the user's Windows version. If the version began with a 9, it was interpreted as one of the Windows 9x operating systems, for which the software was unsupported. If that was the case, the user couldn't run the software at all. Microsoft wanted to prevent such situation from happening with a new Windows release, so they skipped straight to 10.
There was a function that would give you a monotonically-increasing build number that you could compare against the build that any given feature was added in that people should have used, but there was also a function that gave you the name of the OS, and lots of people just checked if that contained a 9. The documentation explicitly said not to do that because it might stop working, but the documentation has never stopped people using the wrong function.
Microsoft's version function didn't return what you think it returned. They would deliver massive changes to OS functionality and call it "second edition" or just some service pack number. The version function gave you the same value for all of it. Literally, the only way to know what version you were working with was to parse the name. Microsoft's own documentation on new functionality told you that was the way to do it. MS even gave you example code to copy and paste.
It wasn't until much later, well after the dumpster fire they had created was blazing away, that they took the time to revise the way any of it worked.
If you're checking for Windows 9 in order to disable features, which is what the jump straight to ten was supposed to protect against (when running a 16-bit binary for 3.1/95 on 32-bit Windows 10, it lies and says it's Windows 98), then you're using at least the Windows 2000 SDK, which provided GetVersion, which includes the build and revision numbers in its return value, and the revision number was increased over 7000 times by updates to Windows 2000.
Ya, that is what I thought, but skipped because I couldn't remember for sure. GetVersion didn't even exist until win2k, so everyone already had their code that checked version numbers written and squared away. They never needed to go back and change it or read the new documentation.
I dug up a manual for the Windows 3.1 SDK, and it turns out that it had the same GetVersion function with the same return value as the Windows 2000 SDK, and it's just that the live MSDN docs pretend that Windows 2000 was the first version of Windows, so show that as the earliest version that every function that came from an older version of Windows. http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/microsoft/windows_3.1/Microsoft_Windows_3.1_SDK_1992/PC28914-0492_Windows_3.1_SDK_Getting_Started_199204.pdf page 31.
I then looked at a manual for the Windows 1.03 SDK, and it, too, has a matching GetVersion function.
The only change to GetVersion over the entire history of Windows is that at some point it switched from returning a sixteen bit value with eight bits for the major version and eight bits for the minor version to a 32-bit value with bits split between major, build number and minor versions, and then later on, GetVersionEx was added to return those numbers as members of a struct instead. There has never been a version of Windows where string comparisons of the display name were appropriate or recommended by Microsoft.
Mac OS 9 is absolutely a thing, 1999-2001.
And Mac OS 10.9 was Mavericks, in 2013.
In this case I think they mean iPhone 9, which I’m still saving my money for
yeah, they released 8 and X simultaneously, what should they do next? release 9/11? badum tssss
In the mean time, Plan 9, since 1992,
I see you are a person of refinement and taste.
Please shove Glenda back into your funhole
Glenda is too powerful for this
Time for Linux anyone?
Linux 9
No. The time has come for Plan 9!
What the fuck does this mean?
OS I think ? There's no Windows 9, so I'm guessing there is no iOS 9 either ?
Idk about loses, but there definitely is a Mac OS 9 ...
I guess it was just not relevant to the meme maker and I'm old. :(
There was no iPhone 9.
And no windows phone 9.
(This fact brought to you by my vague recollection)
I can confirm there was no iPod 9
I hear that astronomers are still looking for Planet 9.
Don't skip 9.
He wants to be skipped.
how dare
What, he does. He’s gone on record saying he doesn’t want anything to do with Doctor Who
Ah. That's not true anymore, he's since said he's made peace with it. He really likes attending cons and he's doing Big Finish (with Billie ❤️). He wouldn't return to the show though, especially while RTD is running it.
Ah. I stopped paying attention before covid
Because 7 ate 9???
Nice
Number 9 is sometimes pronounced ku — with the same pronunciation as agony or torture.
And the same pronunciation as "no" in German.
In Cantonese, the number 9 is also a vulgar way of saying penis (𨳊, Cantonese Yale: gāu)
In French, 9 sounds like “new” (neuf).
In Hebrew, the letter with the value of 7 also means slang for penis!
I guarantee this is because they think people are so stupid they'll see it as a 6 and think it's 2 down from 8 instead of one up.
(They're right)
Windows did it because every programmer/scriptkiddie/etc ever checked if the version was 95/98 by looking for the 9, instead of separate checks for both.
programmer/scriptkiddie/etc
cd: no such file or directory
You don't have a ~/programmer/script kiddie/etc directory? I thought everyone did.
ALL of this is trash.
The X in MacOS X is not a Roman numeral.
It's the X from NeXT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT_Computer
The original Mac software had an emulator to run when OS X came out, but NeXTStep was a different system entirely and not just an iteration on the same OS.
Cute comic though.
Uhm no? The X is a Roman numeral and makes sense as it succeeded classic OS 9. OSX is based on NeXTStep though an Objective-C still carries its prefix with it (all Types are prefixed with NS for example NSString)
Then why was it referred to as Mac os X 10, Mac os X 10.1, Mac os X 10.5 etc?
Dept of redundancy Dept I guess?
There are many more examples.
But it wasn't referred to Mac os X 10.1 etc only as Mac OS 10.1 or their respective codename (cheetah, tiger, ...)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/106545
Or perhaps https://support.apple.com/en-au/102496
Keep going. I'm sure you'll convince Apple.
They later renamed things a bit moving forward.
That doesn't change the history of it.