That was a rumor, never confirmed by Microsoft.
However, Microsoft also skipped shipping Windows NT versions one and two and started out at 3.1.
There are hundreds of projects on Github showing code looking for that exact shortcut, so the ship has not sailed. It was never confirmed by Microsoft, but it was a reasonable explanation. Many apps used workarounds for Windows 9x because of various bugs, or refused to run at all.
Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were actual products. Windows NT started at 3.1 so that users would understand it was at version parity (and thus experience parity) with Windows 3.1.
Are you not aware that this is the tenth anniversary of the iPhone?
- aWatch3 Edition was not mentioned. The Apple Store page shows it exists, but no excitement about new materials. So ceramic is considered a nice compromise, luxurious "enough" but also cheap "enough"?