“Apple is running out of big cats,” Brian Caulfield reports for Forbes.
“Ten years ago, Apple introduced the first major release of its OS X operating system, Cheetah,” Caulfield reports. “Since then, all seven new versions of the operating system have been named after big cats.”
“The problem: there are only so many kinds of cats,” Caulfield reports. “Lion — which incorporates a few tricks learned from Apple’s iPad — was released in July. Apple hasn’t said anything, publicly, about the next version of its OS X operating system.”
Caulfield reports, “First they’ll have to come up with a name. That could be hard. All of the animals Apple has used come from Felidae family in the Carnivora order of mammals… There are a lot of other cats left. None of them are particularly intimidating though. The Eurasian Lynx, can weigh as much as 66 pounds. Even less fearsome: the Eurasian Lynx’s North American cousin, the bobcat; the ocelot — the biggest of the dinky Leopardus genus; and felix catus, the domestic cat. Apple hasn’t tapped a third group of Felidae, now extinct, known as the Machairodontinae.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: What’s your OS X name of choice? Take our poll in the left column of the main site.
Mac OS X versions, names/codenames, and release dates:
• Mac OS X 10.7 Lion : July 20, 2011
• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: August 28, 2009
• Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: October 26, 2007
• Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: April 29, 2005
• Mac OS X 10.3 Panther: October 24, 2003
• Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar: August 24, 2002
• Mac OS X 10.1 Puma: September 25, 2001
• Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah: March 24, 2001
• Mac OS X Public Beta: September 13, 2000.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Lioness.
Mountain Lioness!
I like the idea of moving to mythical creatures. I think the logical segue would be the gryphon.
The body of a lion with the head, wings and talons of an eagle.
The lion is king of beasts while the eagle is the king of birds and flight.
Gryphons are said to mate for life and are known to be guardians of treasures and priceless possessions. What could be a better analog for Mac OS X security?
I want pussy.
Maybe OS X 11 could start naming versions after pioneers of computing?
11.1 Babbage
11.2 Lovelace
11.3 Boole
11.4 Bush – Oh, nevermind!
I vote for Pussy!
Some people have suggested that Cupertino would name the next release of OS X this or that, but I don’t think the city council will have any say in how Apple names its operating systems.
Apple seems to have hit to the top with Lion, the king of the beasts. Extinct cats aren’t a good idea, because they are zoologically old fashioned and the competition can joke that they are dinosaurs. Better the future than the past. The default desktop backgrounds might be a clue. If they stick with “OS X” they might switch to names like Galaxy and Quasar (but not Black Hole!)
There are two problems, really. The cats and the X. The ten in the version number is the name of the operating system, so OS X 10.7 is OS ten ten seven. We’ve been in OS 10 for a very long time. Somewhere along the line, the whole name has to change, or we’ll have OS X 10.10.10 (OS ten ten ten ten). They used a Roman numeral (itself a bit dated) to keep 10 a single digit.
I think the whole name is going to change, eventually. Whatever’s the case, I’m sure they’re already thinking about it if they haven’t decided on a new naming scheme already. The marketing impact is greater if they don’t disclose the name until they introduce the product.
I’d go for chimera.
As ist will be the First step towards a completely New beast.
Had a fluffy black cat in the 70s, a real freak of nature, smarter than any other cat, or dog for that matter. He understood many words and phrases, could climb in ways seemingly impossible, preternaturally skilled hunter (even bats and rabbits). He didn’t take commands but was open to suggestion, liked cars and tv, and would convert the most obdurate cat hater. Even his hard bitten vat wept when he died. His name was Mojo. You can have it, that’s fine.
Alley cat – Meeeoooow!
Clouded Leopard.
Thanator.
those are not “big cats” those are medium cats. apple will move on to something else.
Cougar?
I don’t think Sabertooth is a good idea. Remember, they are extinct. HAHA
Cheshire Cat
Keep OS X but switch from cat names since Lion was already the top cat.
I never liked that Apple went with a space theme for the desktop and Time Machine but used cat names for the OS.
I like consistency. The OS, desktop wallpaper, user icons, etc should all convey the same thing. Then the users can personalize.
OS X 10.8 Snow Lion?
Tiddles.
Mac os 10.8 may well become iOS 6, a single unified operating system. At some point mobile devices and desktop devices will merge seamlessly together, we already have dual core processors in the iPhone and multi touch on the desktop, so we’re really not that far away.
No probs – when the cats are used up, start on the raptors.
Mountain Lion
Enough about cats!
It’s time to fly, dammint! Time to leave the ground and soar like the spirit of Steve Jobs.
Birds of prey is what’s in order.
A call echoing from above, “Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, wow.”
Siri OS.
Nittany Lion. Your kids’ll love it.
Back in the day, working versions of MS ‘Windoze’ used to be tagged with city names whose relative distance from Redmond was some indication about how far those versions were from being unleashed on the public; so I am not suggesting city names.
Bird names are good, but the list of good bird names (like good cat names) are also somewhat limited.
For a rather more extensive name resource, perhaps star names should be considered (not necessarily constellation names, but not excluding it either).
Stars would come after birds. Let’s get off the ground first, then look to the stars.
Once Apple has successfully launched their first satellite then we could transition to the space metaphores.
Birds? Really?
Like Titmouse?
Pigeon?
Finch? Vulture?
I can see it now… Sitting Duck.