Embarcadero just announced a change in how they will name the next release of RAD Studio but first a little history of Delphi version numbering… based on my notes and memory Turbo Pascal 1.0 came out back in 1983 and was sequentially named as 2.0, 3.0…up to Turbo Pascal 7.0 (with the addition of Turbo Pascal for Macintosh.) The Windows version was released in 1991 and the versioning started over as Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.0. Borland released Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.5 and then combined the DOS and Windows products into Borland Pascal 7.0 in 1992 (which was the precursor to Delphi.)
Borland Delphi was released in 1995 and started out as version 1 and was followed by Delphi 2, 3, etc. up until Delphi 7 in 2002. The next custom release was Delphi 8 for .Net and then Borland changed the version naming on the next major release starting with Delphi 2005. The next major release was 2006 and then CodeGear kept the versioning as 2007 (and 2007 for .Net) and then Embarcadero continued this version naming with 2009 and 2010 before introducing the XE version back in 2010.
Embarcadero kept the XE versioning with XE2, XE3… up until XE8 in 2015 before changing to 10 Seattle in 2015 (which coincided with Microsoft releasing Windows 10 in 2015.) This was followed by more city named releases with 10.1 Berlin, 10.2 Tokyo, 10.3 Rio and the latest 10.4 Sydney. These 10 city-named major versions had point releases throughout the year as well (for example, 10.3 Rio Update 1, followed by Update 2 and 3.)
Everyone was expecting a 10.5 city named version for the next major release sometime this Fall but Microsoft has somewhat unexpectedly announced Windows 11 as the next major release for Windows and Embarcadero is following along by renaming the next major release as 11 (see their recent blog post announcement.)
Apple is ahead of the game by abandoning their long used macOS 10 version numbering in 2020 with macOS 11 Big Sur with the next version being macOS 12 Monterey (they started with Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah back in 2001.)
Android joined the 10x version party with the introduction of Android 10 in 2019 after years of names like Cupcake, Donut, Jelly Bean and KitKat. They followed Apple dumping the 10x version number in 2020 with the introduction of Android 11 and the next version is expected to be Android 12.
So it certainly seems like the death of the 10x versions for now! This will be the fifth major version number scheme used for Delphi. As far as RAD Studio goes, if they continue with the same numbering conventions of the past, RAD Studio 11 will be Delphi product version 28, Studio version 22, Compiler version 35, and Package version 280. (How about we start all versions with 420 and call it a day?)
If you want to get in on the new version fun, you can test this code-named Olympus beta version of 11 as long as you have an active update subscription agreement. You should have already received a Beta invite via email, but if you haven’t yet received this invitation yet you should reach out to your sales rep or reseller to get access.
Note that there are currently two types of Update Subscriptions available, a Standard and Premium edition (see their support page for a comparison.) In addition, Marco Cantu recently stated on Twitter that the offerings will be enhanced very soon including a “Premium Beta” and other benefits added to the Premium update subscription edition.
If you need to renew your update subscription, you can use this online form to have someone from Embarcadero reach out to you to process your renewal.
What’s coming in RAD Studio 11 that we should see released sometime this Fall? You can check out details on our wiki page with all known links and info for the upcoming version. As with all plans, nothing is set in stone until the item is shipped but their roadmap includes some cool new features like a High-DPI aware IDE, VCL Style support within the form designer, macOS ARM 64-bit support (for the new M1 Apple Silicon CPUs with macOS 11), and FMX form designer improvements. As with the last few releases, also look for many bug fixes and smaller improvements.