Tony Prophet says the same thing as Microsoft CEO

Oct 14, 2014 09:05 GMT  ·  By

Windows 10 is the name of Microsoft’s new operating system even though everybody expected it to be Windows 9, so it all came as a bit of a surprise for the whole world.

Surprisingly, the software giant didn’t provide any reason for its decision to skip Windows 9, which left room for speculation and created a bunch of new rumors that more or less made sense.

Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella said a couple of weeks ago at Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo conference that Windows 9 “just came and went,” and now another company executive says exactly the same thing during a different event.

Tony Prophet, Microsoft corporate vice president, Windows Marketing, used the very same words to explain what happened with Windows 9, obviously without providing any clear specifics.

Windows 10 is built on consumer feedback

The “based on consumer feedback” motif was once again mentioned by Prophet, who explained that Windows 10 was designed from the ground up to include options requested by users.

At the same time, he said, Windows 10 would bring together all Microsoft’s platforms and would power all devices, including tablets, PCs, and smartphones, but also Internet of Things, smaller, and bigger gadgets.

“Windows 10 is not going to be an incremental step from Windows 8.1. Windows 10 is going to be a material step. We're trying to create one platform, one eco-system that unites as many of the devices from the small embedded Internet of Things, through tablets, through phones, through PCs and, ultimately, into the Xbox,” he said.

“The reason we're doing that is so we can listen to our customers. Our objective with Windows 10 is ... to build absolutely the best OS for the enterprise. That's the early focus," Prophet said. "We've got the process. We've got a million people using it. And we're listening.”

Full version coming in spring 2015

Microsoft has already released a preview version of Windows 10, but the stable build is obviously expected to bring many more improvements, not only in terms of features, but also as far as performance and reliability are concerned.

The company said that the stable version of the operating system would bring lots of other new features, even though the Preview already came with a Start menu, multiple desktops, and other enhancements.

A consumer preview version of Windows 10 is also expected to be released in early 2015 with more updates, while the RTM version should be confirmed a couple of months before the public unveiling in April 2015.