Why did Microsoft skip Windows 9 and jump to Windows 10?

Microsoft earlier this week introduced Windows 10 to the world, an interesting move considering that the last major update to Windows was Windows 8. Of course, a question on everyone's mind was, "What in the world happened to Windows 9?"

During the official unveiling for Redmond's latest OS, Microsoft explained that the forthcoming update was so great that it warranted a '10' moniker. In other words, just as OS X marked a new beginning for the Mac, Microsoft may too believe that Windows 10 will mark a new chapter in the history of Windows. While this may have been a consideration, another theory has emerged via Reddit that, if true, would be just downright comical.

According to Reddit user cranbourne, Microsoft decided to forgo Windows 9 on account of legacy code from third-party apps running checks for Windows 9x.

The comment reads:

Microsoft dev here, the internal rumours are that early testing revealed just how many third party products that had code of the form

if(version.StartsWith("Windows 9"))

{ /* 95 and 98 */

} else {

and that this was the pragmatic solution to avoid that.

It's almost like Microsoft's version of Y2K.

But perhaps we should just take this all with a grain of salt. After all, another Reddit commentor quipped, "You're talking about the same company that went from Xbox 360 to Xbox One."

Touche.