“Apple products have gone through a series of name changes through the years. Sure, it’s been ‘the Mac’ seemingly forever, but not just the Mac. Mac II, Mac LC, Mac SE, Mac Portable, Mac PowerBook, Mac Quadra, iMac, iBook, various G3 and G4 models, Mac mini, MacBook Air, Power Mac and MacBook Pro, and MacBook,” Wil Gomez writes for Mac360. “Whew. All Macs.”
“iPod, iPod mini, iPod nano, iPod Classic, iPhone iPhone G3 to iPhone 6s Plus and now iPhone SE. Times change and so do product names,” Gomez writes. “Say goodbye to OS X. Why? Because change.”
Gomez writes, “Apple’s naming schemes for operating systems have gone through changes, too. The iPhone’s operating system became iOS. Now we have watchOS, tvOS, and if the hints prove true, soon no more OS X; instead, macOS.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Say goodbye to trying to work ‘Mac’ and ‘OS X,’ but never ‘Mac OS X,’ into your MacDailyNews headlines,” says Messrs. and Mesdames Inside Baseball to themselves, hopefully.
Mac OS X was better than OS X and “macOS,” given tvOS, watchOS, and iOS, is even better today.
I’ll vote for “macOS”.
The Roman numeral “X” in Mac OS X and OS X is confusing and redundant when spoken, e.g. “Mac OS 10 10.11.4”. It would be sufficient to just say “macOS 10.11.4”.
It will also make it MUCH easier to say “macOS 11” when that comes.
I totally agree. I thought 10.10 was ridiculous, but 10.11 is even more so. Either move up to OS XI or ditch the “X” altogether.
It’s important to remember the reason for the X in mac OS X. System 7,8, and 9 were dead and the new direction had to show in the name.
Not 10 but X.
System 11 FTW!
And hopefully we will no longer have to cringe when friends pronounce it “Oh Ess Ex.”
I’ve been calling it that for 14 years since I bought my TiBook 667 this week in 2002. Hard habit to break 😉
In Tom Hank’s movie That Thing You Do, the band is called The One-ders, like the number one. Everyone calls them The Oh-nee-ders. Hanks as their manager promptly renames them The Wonders. The jokester in the band quips, “As in I Wonder what happened to The Oh-nee-ders?
Every PC weenie I know says Oh Ess Ex.
I miss Snow Leopard and jelly beans.
One reason I support this — to no longer hear “oh-ess-EX”… ugh.
I hear you. While I read “oh-ess-EX”, I say “oh-ess-TEN” or just Mac OS. Now that Apple is going to my way of thinking… “Mac OS” it is.
When people say “oh-ess-EX”, I sometimes hear “Oh, sex”. But, then again, that could just be me 😉
I hope Apple renames it ‘Big Rocks’ because it readily smashes Windows.
Technically we should be at version 21.
Keeping the first digit the same “10” and changing the digit after the first dot to signify a major OS release went against all known software versioning standards at that point. What a way to make a mess for all the smaller software creators to then do what ever they like to version numbers.
I like the name! Let’s start the new name off with a few needed improvements.
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-would-you-improve-osx.1961714/
So, has Apple said anything or leaked anything to make the reporter think/write that this change is coming? Or is he just making this up out of thin air in order to fill his quota of clickable stories?
Yes (Mac OS has been found in code due to recent news)
In a file name, in a fairly ambiguous way.
I hope this is true, and it makes sense, but the supposed evidence for it is really weak.
Well I hope we hear less from Tim Cook about pads replacing real computers, and I hope we see more effort in bring the Mac up to date and improving its reliability. The name change is just window-dressing. The problem is a faulty view of the future by people at Apple who don’t actually do any of the real work.
What about CarPlay? carOS.
It would be great if the os geeks at Apple are allowed to roll out some of their goodies out of the lab and into the new operating system. How about a faster or more reliable file system like ZFS? Bravo for the name change going forward. Let’s have some new great tech as well.
iOS is already by far the dominant OS of Apple devices. I wouldn’t doubt that in the future MacOS or whatever it’s called, is a “Pro” feature on a tiny sliver of devices.
Everyone knows the only reason for the moniker OS X was the fact that 99% of people read it as “OS SEX”, and it gained subliminal cred/mindshare. See for yourself, try and use oh-ess-ten among the unwashed — they will not know what the hell you are talking about.
I look forward to macOS. It works better for search.
If they combine MacOS and iOS then will MiOS drive the pro version iPads in the future ?
I’d trademark ‘MiOS’ ASAP if I were you. It’s too cute and will be plagiarized immediately.
No one ever pronounced it correctly anyway.
At least it’s not “ComputerOS”.
Mac OS sounds good and clean, like the mac is. Just one problem, I don’t like how thin the Mac Mini’s edges are, lol. I almost dropped it, and almost cut myself fumbling to catch it.
Has anyone come up with: “WTF 1.0”
MDN has scared up WTF over and over again, by printing scare headlines with glee…these stories turn out to be less than we thought. The internet is like a bad guitar amplifier, with distortion you didn’t want washing out the distortion you did want.
… Or “WGAF 1.0”
I think macOS is the only logical decision.
…Mac Performa, the unwanted hobbled-level Macs that piled up in Apple warehouses to the tune of $1 Billion worth, creating the financial chaos of 1997.
Meanwhile, I never understood why Apple dropped ‘Mac’ from the OS name. So now it’s going to be macOS X, or XI or whatever. This stuff soooo reminds me of the rubbish marketing would pull at Kodak where they’d change the names of things around in order to look like marketing was actually DOING something. 🙄 Creating incoherence is what they were doing.
They can name it George if they fix the reliability issues, what they name it means nothing.
I would like to see MacOS 10.6.8 Pro.
I like macOS. It’s classic and it avoids the weirdness of the fact OS X was the tenth version of Mac OS.
Now we are on 10.11. Is that macOS 11 or Mac OS X.11 or Mac OS X v.2 or Mac OS XI?
Just a name change. And this is news?