Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How do you pronounce OSX?

MacRy

MacRy

macrumors 601
Original poster
Apr 2, 2004
4,351
6,278
England
I always refer to it as O S EX but i've heard other people refer to it as O S 10. Which do people use?
 
I say OS TEN.

I believe that is the correct way to say it. In fact if you go into terminal and use the 'say' command with the sentence "I love Mac OS X" it will also say OS ten when it reads it back.
 
friarbayliff said:
Meh, I still say O S Ex
Click to expand...

Well if you think about it in terms of past apple os's such as OS nine, OS eight, etc... You'd call it OS ten.

LOL its' just an odd pet peeve of mine, like when people type MAC in all caps. Its not an acronym, its Mac, a proper name.
 
ten.

really, its the only thing that makes sense... we had os 9, now we have os ex?

no, i prefer to think that the x is just a plain jane roman numeral x... when you see a series that's been named with roman numerals, do you say

wow! rocky vee i i is out! or do you say
wow! rocky 7 is out!

okay, bad example with the rocky movies, but you get the point...
 
it's "officially" oh-es-ten since "X" stands for "10"

however, i don't think there's anything wrong with oh-es-ex anymore. i feel like apple itself has started using "X" to mean more than just the number 10, to come after OS 9.

you see apple post OS X Update 10.3.5, which makes X and 10 redundant if X was strictly 10...
 
jxyama said:
it's "officially" oh-es-ten since "X" stands for "10"

however, i don't think there's anything wrong with oh-es-ex anymore. i feel like apple itself has started using "X" to mean more than just the number 10, to come after OS 9.

you see apple post OS X Update 10.3.5, which makes X and 10 redundant if X was strictly 10...
Click to expand...

LOL, thirteenva's suggestion of trying the say command is rather compelling, but I agree with jxyama. Whatever was originally intended, the "EX" pronunciation seems to have stuck. No one says "Office dot TEN." It was a similar move to how Intel never left Pentium, even though the name was originally based on the chip as a 80586 successor to the 80486.

Also there are applications like 0SEx or whatever its called, etc, that use the "ex" pronunciation.

But we're a happy family. We should all call it whatever we want. ;)
 
Apple took endless hours to come with names for specific OS X versions, let's call them Jaguar, Panther and Tiger......can you imagine the hard work of coming up with names like Panther and Tiger? Steve Jobs is suffering from illness from all that hard work. ;)
 
i never thought about it, but i've always been an O S Ex person. has a kind of "Macintosh Operating System EXTREME!!" ring to it. i'll have to use the ten more though. that seems more traditional.
 
Got to wonder what will happen in the future when its time for OS XXX.

I can see the marketing now " OS triple X, giving a whole new meaning to the term 'look and feel' ".

:D
 
I say OS Ten.

That's so awesome that Terminal says "OS X" as "OS Ten" but "Random Word X" as "Random Word Ex."
 
I say it correctly, "OS TEN". I've been known to bitchslap people for verbalizing "OS EX" in my presence. To me, it's just as bad as people that write "Ipod" or "MAC". Incorrect is incorrect. If you're going to use the world's most advanced operating system, pronunciation shouldn't be this hard...

paul
 
paulwhannel said:
I say it correctly, "OS TEN". I've been known to bitchslap people for verbalizing "OS EX" in my presence. To me, it's just as bad as people that write "Ipod" or "MAC". Incorrect is incorrect. If you're going to use the world's most advanced operating system, pronunciation shouldn't be this hard...

paul
Click to expand...

You shouldn't take it so personally dude. Our American cousins mispronounce a number of things in the 'English language' but I don't go around 'bitchslapping' them.

;)
 
Jag-U-Wire

Aww, come on . . . After years, now, of Steve Jobs' mostly-dealing-with-OSX Keynote addresses streamed live into packed Apple Store theaters, then on the Apple website, fans hanging on every word he utters on stage in front of a two-storey-high OSX graphic, AND NONE OF YOU MACHEADS REMEMBER HOW STEVE PRONOUNCES "OSX" ???!?!? (That would count as official . . .)

Oh, wait; This is the guy who pronounces Jaguar "Jag-You-Wire"!

Nevermind.

(I think either way sounds great; when I want to feel wild, free, cool and creative, I say "O S eX" [as in "EXtreme"], but when talking to a tech administrator & wanting to sound buttoned-down professional, I say "O S Ten" . . !!)
 
I say "OS Ex". I like the way it sounds better, and I think that Apple had to know people would call it that. In fact, I think that most people say "OS Ex". And, yes, I fully realize that the correct pronunciation is "OS ten". However, 99%+ of the time, I'm writing it, not saying it, so it doesn't matter. In fact, when I talk, I almost always use "Panther", "Jaguar", etc. So, in the end, I'm not even sure I've actually verbalized it as "OS Ex" to anyone. However, in the voice in my head, as I read it, it's "OS Ex". Since I always wear my aluminum foil pointy cap, my brain waves aren't influencing anyone else, so I suppose it's my business alone how I choose to pronounce it internally.

I also say - out loud - "jiff" instead of "giff" when I'm talking about GIF files. Anyone have a problem with that? ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back