“Windows 9” Mystery Reappears In A Recent Microsoft Document

Back in October 2014, Microsoft shocked the world by announcing its new operating system Windows 10. Since then, people have been making guesses about Windows 9 that disappeared like a ghost.

This never-launched operating system from Microsoft, that was supposed to hit the market before Windows 10, has reappeared in a Microsoft patent filing. This document was published on March 31, 2016.

Before we speculate the meanings of this appearance, let’s take a look at the patent document that mentions Windows 9. The document is titled “Compiler Caching for Runtime Routine Redundancy Tracking”.

This patent was first spotted by a Twitter user @h0x0d:

this patent from @JimRadigan mentions "Windows 9 Threshold" LOL https://t.co/5UIYGJj4DK

— WalkingCat (@h0x0d) April 10, 2016

Windows 9 mystery finally solved?

Microsoft never revealed why it didn’t launch Windows 9 and skipped it to release Windows 10. Some might argue that the differences between Windows 8.1 and the next release were so big that it was important to make a jump.

Based upon the mention of “Windows 9 Threshold” in the patent document, one theory, that’s floating across the inernet, provides some satisfactory answer to the Windows 9 mystery.

The theory suggests that Windows 9 was supposed to be the Windows version that was launched last year, while the upcoming Redstone aka Anniversary Update was originally projected as Windows 10.

This theory makes sense because Microsoft was calling the first iteration of Windows as Threshold and the lastest one is known as Redstone.

In simpler words: Windows 9 = Threshold (July 2015), Windows 10 = Redstone (July 2016)

Whatever might be the case, Windows 9 is a thing of past and Microsoft is busy making Windows 10 better and bringing new features like Bash on Ubuntu.

Do you find this theory interesting? Share your views in the comments below.