Why did Microsoft skip win9?

Microsoft believes that the next version of its operating system has improved enough to skip the seniority-based name "Windows 9" and call it "Windows 10."

However, the new system Microsoft briefly showed off on Tuesday feels more familiar than its much-criticized predecessor, Windows 8.

These changes show that Microsoft continues to find the secret to revitalizing its Windows products and hopes to boost PC sales that have slumped in recent years. Although Microsoft doesn't stand out compared to Apple, Google, and other companies that have shaped the mobile market, the vast majority of PCs in the world still run Windows.

With "Windows 8", Microsoft has redesigned its operating system for increasingly popular touch-screen devices, creating a start screen that is completely different from the previous Windows desktop. This screen is lined with groups of "tiles" that allow users to launch apps with a finger tap and quickly browse photo streams, Facebook updates and emails.

However, users' evaluation of this new interface is quite polarized, and this interface seems to ignore the fact that most people still use Windows systems through mouse and keyboard, rather than touch screens. "We didn't get everything right," Joe Belfiroe, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Operating Systems Group, said at Tuesday's press conference.

Although Microsoft has not given up on the Start screen in "Windows 10", it has hidden it so that most users have no chance to see it. The software borrows some elements from the tile interface, but they only pop up when the user taps the menu button at the bottom of the screen.

The home screen of "Windows 10" is still the desktop interface that Microsoft has used for decades. In the patches launched for "Windows 8", Microsoft has begun to make it easy for users to get rid of the tile interface, but the new system has done more thoroughly.

Carolina Milanesi, chief researcher at market research firm Kantar Worldpanel, said: "This is what Windows 8 should be."

Microsoft executives emphasized that touch operation Still an important part of Windows, the company hasn't given up on this design philosophy. If someone is using "Windows 10" on a hybrid device that has both a keyboard and a touch screen, such as Microsoft's own Surface tablet, the new system will automatically adjust to include a tile interface when the keyboard is unplugged. Some analysts predict that most new computers will eventually be equipped with touch screens.

Although the appearance is similar, Microsoft executives said that they skipped the "Windows 9" name because there are other major improvements in the new system. The operating system currently uses a lot of the same code as other products such as Microsoft's mobile operating system, which makes it easier for developers to create applications for different devices.

Microsoft said it held the conference on Tuesday in large part because it planned to reveal its ideas for system improvements to its large enterprise customers. These customers are Microsoft's most stable source of profits, but they were ignored when "Windows 8" was launched.