I am waiting for the advert for
New from Apple.. OS-XXX, you'll be screwed if you don't.
New from Apple.. OS-XXX, you'll be screwed if you don't.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
OS X in 2016... macOS?
- Thread starter ButteryScrollin
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
This is not entirely accurate. More precisely, iOS and OS X (and all other variants) are based on a common codebase which is the Darwin kernel and some core services. Improvements to this codebase gets integrated into both OS X and iOS (even though there can be some features exclusive to a particular OS flavour). Also, it is not true that everything starts on OS X. In fact — as I mentioned in a previous post — many frameworks are introduced on iOS first and then migrated to OS X once deemed stable enough.
In the end, OS X = Darwin + desktop-specific frameworks, apps and components, iOS = Darwin + mobile-specific frameworks, apps and components and so on. Its a very efficient software model that allow to introduce improvements into all Apple OS flavours at the same time, while keeping them optimised for their specific purpose.
Question: why is it iOS first? Shouldn't it be OS X first, as OS X is "more important" and the core OS.
I tried to explain this before. With a mobile OS, you have a rapid software and hardware cycle, users tend to upgrade more often and dramatic changes are more easily accepted. In addition, the app design is simpler. Finally, you have a very large user base. This makes iOS ideal as a testing ground. Apple can easily introduce some experimental change in iOS A and then remove/modify it in iOS A+1. They have brought many development frameworks to iOS first, gathered developer's feedback and then brought the refined and extended versions to OS X (e.g. Storyboards, Metal etc.). Another example is the current Aqua redesign that has happened in Yosemite. The visual style is clearly based on the design experiments Apple did with iOS 7, but 10.10/iOS 8 are based on a much improved and redefined version of this design. With iOS, dramatic visual changes like that are not a big deal. Now imagine if they would do it with OS X all the time. People would go absolutely crazy (and for a good reason). Besides, OS X is not 'more important'. And its not really the core OS, Darwin is. Or, you could say that OS X is more important and its precisely because of this that it gets some features later, to let them mature more.
I think this is a very reasonable and even clever development scheme. By using the mobile as testing ground, they throughly check the design of a feature before it is brought to a more stable desktop platform.
I don’t think there ever will be an OS 11. Within ten years OS X and iOS will have converged and Apple will drop one for the other and rename the latter into something new (maybeOS
). A new OS would require a major technology development that makes it worthwhile to abandon either iOS or OS X and so far there aren’t that many bottlenecks that the systems couldn’t adapt to.
iOS and OS X are too fundamentally different to be merged.
Making iOS more like OS X would make mobile devices more like desktop computers, which would remove the simplicity that most mobile device users want.
Making OS X more like iOS will restrict it too much, making it less suitable for developers and people working on more complex tasks. On my Mac I might have 7 or 8 things going at the same time; I might be developing a project requiring command line access and having full access to the machine (which iOS denies) is important.
Either direction is bad. Tim Cook has a good point when he said the two would never be merged. They serve different purposes and serve them well, and trying to merge them will hurt one or the other.
OS X 10.11.4 framework resource found with ‘macOS’ naming, fueling more speculation about an OS X rebranding
"Specifically, the document is named FUFlightViewController_macOS.nib. Notice the “macOS” right before the filename extension. According to Rambo, this changed in OS X 10.11.4, which just launched publicly nine days ago."
http://9to5mac.com/2016/03/30/interface-builder-document-os-x-10-11-4-macos-rebranding/
"Specifically, the document is named FUFlightViewController_macOS.nib. Notice the “macOS” right before the filename extension. According to Rambo, this changed in OS X 10.11.4, which just launched publicly nine days ago."
http://9to5mac.com/2016/03/30/interface-builder-document-os-x-10-11-4-macos-rebranding/
Interesting! Could either be a harbinger pointing towards a rebrand, or an old-school Apple engineer who named it that way out of habit, or a re-hired Apple employee whose last time working for Apple was during the Mac OS 9 days?OS X 10.11.4 framework resource found with ‘macOS’ naming, fueling more speculation about an OS X rebranding
"Specifically, the document is named FUFlightViewController_macOS.nib. Notice the “macOS” right before the filename extension. According to Rambo, this changed in OS X 10.11.4, which just launched publicly nine days ago."
http://9to5mac.com/2016/03/30/interface-builder-document-os-x-10-11-4-macos-rebranding/
No rebranding. Apple uses Mac as a short form of Macintosh, even for non-obsolete products like (r)MacBook (Pro) computers and Apple developer documentation:OS X 10.11.4 framework resource found with ‘macOS’ naming, fueling more speculation about an OS X rebranding
"Specifically, the document is named FUFlightViewController_macOS.nib. Notice the “macOS” right before the filename extension. According to Rambo, this changed in OS X 10.11.4, which just launched publicly nine days ago."
http://9to5mac.com/2016/03/30/interface-builder-document-os-x-10-11-4-macos-rebranding/
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/
But they never used the camelBack in file names before. Always Mac, MacOS or MacOSX, never ‘macOS’.
I'd just drop the number. At some point it becomes ridiculous – "I'm using OS X 10.23.8". Call it macOS and leave it there, with numbers and builds available when someone clicks "macOS" in About This Mac.
If the "X" in "OS X" is supposed to denote the Roman numeral for "10", wouldn't the previous generation of the OS have been called "OSIX" instead of "OS9" ?
It is supposed to denote the Roman numeral for the number 10, but from what I've heard the X can also refer back to Unix and NeXT as well. Just because the X was a departure from their previous naming scheme for OS's doesn't mean it's not a roman numeral.
Agreed. But I don't agree with people using this "the X refers to Unix" argument to say they will never move away from the current naming. The marketing needs of the year 1998 (say it's the next version after, stress the fact that it's Unix-based to build credibility for the server market) are no longer relevant in 2016. From a business point of view, the risk of slightly hurting the iOS ecosystem by people confusing "iOS 10" with "OS X 10.12" is much more important now.
To me this matters only because I would expect Mac OS X 10.12 to be an iteration, and macOS 1.0 to be a revolution.
the real question is, what's left to innovate?
personally I buy Apple for technology that "just works". stability is more important than just another "must have" feature
personally I buy Apple for technology that "just works". stability is more important than just another "must have" feature
"the real question is, what's left to innovate?
personally I buy Apple for technology that "just works". stability is more important than just another "must have" feature"
This is the main reason i switched from microsoft windows when vista came out, i bought a brand new dell laptop from best buy. brought it to my local starbucks to try to set it up for storm chasing with weather radar, and weather model programs. my local starbucks has always had lightning fast wifi so i figured it was a good place to download and install the programs i use for chasing. the miserable laptop had to crash at least 5 times in the first hour of use and was as slow as 20w50 engine oil on a -30 degree day. took the miserable pile of garbage back to the best buy at least 5 times before they told me well you know microsoft vista is a brand new operating system so it will get better after the first service pack came out. ended up meeting a friend of mine at the same starbucks later that day and i saw he was using a white laptop with a lit up apple on the lid. asked him what kind of computer he was using and he told me it is an Apple macbook running Apple's version of os x which at that time if i remember was snow leopard. meanwhile i was trying to send an important email to a member of my storm chase team and my damned dell computer started with its usual crap of crashing every 2 minutes and have to be restarted each time. i think i swore at the computer and my friend asked me if i wanted to use his macbook.... mind you i never used any apple products before so i was a little nervous but i said let me try. it let me type my long email and send it without any complaints out of it and i continued to use it on the internet for a little while before i knew my friend was using a silver laptop with an apple on it, asked him what that laptop is and he said this is my new apple macbook pro. told him i need to get a laptop like the white one i was using, he told me i could buy his for $100.00....bought it on the spot and the only thing i have a windows laptop for is live weather radar, but that soon may be ending too since i hear the new version of radarscope is just as good. i will never use any other computer besides apple and soon i hopefully will be rid of my android phone for an iPhone and be all apple! apple is the ultimate best product!
personally I buy Apple for technology that "just works". stability is more important than just another "must have" feature"
This is the main reason i switched from microsoft windows when vista came out, i bought a brand new dell laptop from best buy. brought it to my local starbucks to try to set it up for storm chasing with weather radar, and weather model programs. my local starbucks has always had lightning fast wifi so i figured it was a good place to download and install the programs i use for chasing. the miserable laptop had to crash at least 5 times in the first hour of use and was as slow as 20w50 engine oil on a -30 degree day. took the miserable pile of garbage back to the best buy at least 5 times before they told me well you know microsoft vista is a brand new operating system so it will get better after the first service pack came out. ended up meeting a friend of mine at the same starbucks later that day and i saw he was using a white laptop with a lit up apple on the lid. asked him what kind of computer he was using and he told me it is an Apple macbook running Apple's version of os x which at that time if i remember was snow leopard. meanwhile i was trying to send an important email to a member of my storm chase team and my damned dell computer started with its usual crap of crashing every 2 minutes and have to be restarted each time. i think i swore at the computer and my friend asked me if i wanted to use his macbook.... mind you i never used any apple products before so i was a little nervous but i said let me try. it let me type my long email and send it without any complaints out of it and i continued to use it on the internet for a little while before i knew my friend was using a silver laptop with an apple on it, asked him what that laptop is and he said this is my new apple macbook pro. told him i need to get a laptop like the white one i was using, he told me i could buy his for $100.00....bought it on the spot and the only thing i have a windows laptop for is live weather radar, but that soon may be ending too since i hear the new version of radarscope is just as good. i will never use any other computer besides apple and soon i hopefully will be rid of my android phone for an iPhone and be all apple! apple is the ultimate best product!
So of course, the big rumor right now is that Apple is going to drop the OS X name in favor of macOS.
I can totally see Apple doing this, but what if it's actually more deep than that.
I have a theory that Apple will be announcing the macOS roadmap. macOS will be the future successor to OS X (just how OS X was the successor to Mac OS). We'll see another California named OS X (10.12 Sequoia? 10.12 Malibu? 10.12 Fuji?), and we'll see the first version of macOS arrive afterwards (or possibly after 10.13).
Just a fun theory, and I want to see what people think.
I can totally see Apple doing this, but what if it's actually more deep than that.
I have a theory that Apple will be announcing the macOS roadmap. macOS will be the future successor to OS X (just how OS X was the successor to Mac OS). We'll see another California named OS X (10.12 Sequoia? 10.12 Malibu? 10.12 Fuji?), and we'll see the first version of macOS arrive afterwards (or possibly after 10.13).
Just a fun theory, and I want to see what people think.