Mac OS X11! (Purrr...!)
WARNING: Looong post, lotsa replies!
Originally posted by Tequila Grandma
...I've always wondered just what will happen when they reach OS 11. Will they just ditch "X" altogether, will it be "OS XI", or will they just follow OS 10.9 with OS 10.9.6.7.5 etc etc etc, so that they'll never have to give up their precious X?
About a year and a half ago in
the other leading brand of Mac news forum (too bad they don't retain posts back that far, so you'll hafta take my word for it ;-), yours truly predicted that Apple would increment the Mac OS a full version number from v10.x to v11.x only when their support for the X11 standard (aka the "X windows system", as used for other Unices' GUIs) was built into the standard Mac OS, fully conformant to all Aqua GUI conventions (screen-top menubar, all widgets with the expected Mac appearance, placements, behaviour, etc.), and thoroughly integrated to such a degree that Gramma and Grampa Macuser, with their box-stock iMac and OS, could download and unwrap X11-compliant source, compile and install it, then launch and use the resulting app just as easily as they would otherwise download and unwrap a .sit or .dmg archive, run the installer, then launch and use the resulting, traditional Mac app. Only then would Apple change the OS name to (drumroll, please)...
"Mac OS X11" (pronounced "ex-eleven", since it ain't "ten" anymore ;-). They've even already quoted Spinal Tap on their current X11 beta page: "This one goes to eleven."
Originally posted by backspinner
About the numbering of OS X beyond 10.9: 10.10 and 10.11 are very good possibilities in my eyes. It just wins or fails on the marketing behind it.
Someone had speculated about that versioning scheme back around the same time I made the above prediction. Their reasoning went along the lines of "X/10/ten" being part of the product designation, rather than part of the version number, with the true version number being the apparent "point release" after the first "." -- to which I replied, I guess that means that v10.0 really was still a beta (and "Cheetah" was rather ironic, as someone here said), after all!
Anywho, I dunno how well that scheme would fly marketingwise, since most people expect the standard convention of x.y.z where
x is a major update,
y is a minor update, and
z is a bugfix/patch -- they'd be wondering when the heck Apple's ever going to
really update their eventually-years-old OS instead of just "refining" the same old, same old, over and over and over
ad infinitum et nauseum.
Originally posted by Longey Nowze
sticking with the X is a both a good thing and a bad thing, it's good for advertising and stuff but it's bad for the average user.. if in five years from now we are still using Mac OS X lunx or tiger or what ever they call it... the average user will think that it's the same old OS launched in 2000... it would also bring up they problem of paying not wanted to pay for a new OS every year cuz it has the same name, that could explain the cat names though... Apple were using the old naming scheme we would be in OS 13 by now no?
I think this reinforces the case for a rename to Mac OS X11 at some point, and IMHO, seamless X11 support would be just the kind of revolutionary major update (oodles of free, and suddenly
easy to get, software from downloadable open-source code: not just for geex anymore!) that would warrant a full-integer version increment, which sooo conveniently would happen to be an increment to v11.x. FAIK, the versioning could well have been planned that way all along, ever since the NeXT acquisition; Steverino's the kind of guy to take that sort of long-term overview, and if you think about it, did the updates applied to produce Mac OS 9
really warrant a full-integer version increment from Mac OS 8.6? I think not; jumping prematurely to v9.x was just part of Steve's masterplan for apparently progressive stages of evolution towards "X11 for the rest of us" (at least Mac OS X v10.x didn't have anything to do with those X10 cameras of accursed popup-ad fame -- but then again, now we have the iSight, hm...).
(Side note: I gather that one of the major shareholders in the ISP I used to work for was the guy who wrote the original, non-Mac "OS9", ironically a Unix-oid OS itself, for which name Apple likely paid him a handsome sum to use; either that, or he just let them use it, being a really nice guy and a Mac aficionado to boot...
er, no pun intended...)
Originally posted by slightly
Did the cat theme start as an internal build codename that got picked up by marketing, or was it marketing's thing all along? Either way, I actually wish they hadn't made the naming system public. Excitable marketing executives never think these things through. If they're trying to set up a "wild cat" metaphor - well, the panther is the only large cat that can't roar. Is that what they want? To take OS X's roar away? For the next round of codenames, I'm proposing that Apple use the names of H. P. Lovecraft's mythos - I for one would definitely buy an OS called "Cthulhu".
I think the cat codenames started as internal-only, but rumor-based eager anticipation referencing those codenames got so rampant that Apple decided to capitalize on all the free advance publicity. For later builds, they had been shifting towards wine-related internal codenames, but after seizing the cats by the throat (don't try
that at home!
, Merlot and Pinot became renamed as Jaguar and Panther, respectively (IIRC).
BTW, I think it's more accurate to say that the G5 took the PowerMac's "roar" away! (heh, get it, silent cooling...
okay, granted, that was a lame one, but I'm sorely sleep-dep'd by now... Also, I suspect that "Cthulhu" would be a
very bad codename for an OS -- take it from my SysAdmin friend who once warned me, "
Never, ever name a machine "Eris", or anything along similar lines, as it
will live up (or down) to its name. I named a laptop that once and it caused me no end of discord during the roadtrip I took it on, thinking I'd get some work done with it -- HA! Hahaha... he... ho... hrr..."
Originally posted by MacBandit
All the recent names for Microsoft operating systems come from the Whistler/Black Comb ski area in British Columbia. Longhorn is the name of a a bar in a town near the ski areas.
Hawhawhaw! Yeah, that fits, alrighty -- stranded in unexpected white-out conditions and just standing around dumbfounded with yr buddies and colleagues, unable to do what you want nor even what you went there for in the first place, waiting and hoping for the bad spell to clear up and getting all boozy-headed meanwhile to pass the time and relieve the stress...
Anywho, what code-naming theme
should Apple move to, once they (inevitably) run out of nifty cat names? I kinda like the mythological angle, so long as (in light of the above anecdote) they stick to
benevolent deities, mebbe demi-deities and heroes/heroines. Anyone for Mac OS X11 "Prometheus"? I kinda like it, think it'd be apropos in light of my prediction...
