Microsoft eventually realized the world isn't just the Northern Hemisphere

Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen has explained why the megacorp ditched its increasingly twee naming conventions for Windows 10 releases in favor of the blander H1 and H2.

The reason, according to Chen, was that Microsoft realized calling releases "Spring" and "Fall" didn't make sense in all parts of the world. Not just the fact that "Fall" is a meaningless term in markets such as the UK, it was also that Spring in one part of the world was not necessarily Spring in another.

Chen explained that the issue came up during a meeting where Microsoft was mulling over whether it had any unconscious biases. "One of my colleagues raised his hand," he said.

"He grew up in the Southern Hemisphere, where the seasons are opposite from those in the Northern Hemisphere. He pointed out that naming the updates Spring and Fall shows a Northern Hemisphere bias and is ...