Rather than recycling 'seasonal' names for OS upgrades, the company changed things up this time around.
By Gregg Keizer
Senior Reporter, Computerworld | APRIL 30, 2018
Microsoft will start distributing the next Windows 10 feature upgrade, "Windows 10 April 2018 Update," today - a few weeks later then it had been expected to arrive.
The release date barely squeaked under the wire Microsoft set for itself with its labeling of the upgrade, although the company has never expressed concern when actual release dates have conflicted with each update's alternate - and numeric - title, the one formatted as yymm. That conflict continued with the April 2018 upgrade. Its 1803 moniker envisioned a March, not a last-day-of-April, debut.
Microsoft will start distributing the next Windows 10 feature upgrade, "Windows 10 April 2018 Update," today - a few weeks later then it had been expected to arrive.
The release date barely squeaked under the wire Microsoft set for itself with its labeling of the upgrade, although the company has never expressed concern when actual release dates have conflicted with each update's alternate - and numeric - title, the one formatted as yymm. That conflict continued with the April 2018 upgrade. Its 1803 moniker envisioned a March, not a last-day-of-April, debut.
But the new name puts a spotlight on more than just that long-standing contradiction. Here are the most likely reasons Microsoft changed Windows 10's nicknaming.
Microsoft would have exhausted seasonal names
After last year's "Fall Creators Update," for the October feature upgrade, Microsoft would have run out of seasons this month unless it was willing to upend, if not its twice-annual cadence, then the times during the year when it would issue a refresh. (There was a time when virtually everyone, including Computerworld, assumed the latest would be branded as "Spring Creators Update," a single-word upgrade on April 2017's "Creators Update.")
The protesting howls would have matched stadium concert levels.
As some noted, the naming is also northern hemisphere-centric, because south of the equator, "spring" comes in September and "fall" in March.
So, absent a decision to add Roman numerals to the nameplates - "Spring Creators Update II" or "Fall Creators Update IV" - and risk mimicking Hollywood's creative bankruptcy, Microsoft faced a forced name change.
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