...and that first point update costs you real money.

First decimal would be a totally new OS or a massive overhaul.

Microsoft likes to make it appear as if each new version of Windows is a major new thing but the last huge change was XP. XP was a consumer-ised Windows 2000.

OSX has been gradually changing and so hasn't warranted a new major release number. Besides, OSXI just isn't as catchy.

Apple are an american company. In the UK we're very good at ruining businesses or selling them to foreign companies and letting them ruin them for us.

The American aren't too bad at doing that either. Whatever happened to Indian motorcyles, or - closer to home - DEC?

In reply to a post by gilesjuk:

Microsoft likes to make it appear as if each new version of Windows is a major new thing but the last huge change was XP. XP was a consumer-ised Windows 2000.

2000 was the huge change over NT4.0, and XP was a minor tweak to 2000 to improve perceived performance and include gaming APIs from Windows 98/ME.

Vista was a huge change over XP and Win7 is a performance tweak and new GUI on Vista.

The low level kernel engineering changes are NT4, NT5 (XP), NT6 (Vista); and the public acceptance releases are XP (5.1) and 7 (kernel 6.1)

Apple's vista era rewrite is essentially iOS ??

Yes, but XP was the first consumer OS to use the NT code stream. Massive change since before then Microsoft had a business OS (NT, 2000) and a consumer line (95, 98, ME).

While there's been a lot of changes there's not been a huge change in terms of the architecture. Just some chair shuffling and security mods.

In reply to a post by gilesjuk:

Yes, but XP was the first consumer OS to use the NT code stream. Massive change since before then Microsoft had a business OS (NT, 2000) and a consumer line (95, 98, ME).

Well the bulk of the change was in 2000....

While there's been a lot of changes there's not been a huge change in terms of the architecture. Just some chair shuffling and security mods.

From what I read there was a lot in Vista, such as rewriting the entire graphics subsystem, a new idea replacing what had been in Windows since 1.0, which is just one reason to give a new full version no?

Rather more interesting is the stuff that didn't make it, but which MS announced - a trap Apple goes to great length to avoid falling into.

In reply to a post by gilesjuk:

First decimal would be a totally new OS or a massive overhaul.

A misunderstanding here... in, for example, OS X 10.6.2 the "first decimal" to me is the "6". The "10" is the major version number.

Besides, OSXI just isn't as catchy.

The "X" in OS X stands for "Unix based", it's a coincidence that it's Roman for the major version number. The next one, assuming it's still Unix-based, will be OS X 11.p.q.

I believe that you are wrong. Else why isn't it pronounced "OS ex" rather than "OS ten"? I suspect that the "X" also owes a little to "NeXTSTEP".