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greenguy4

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 2, 2005
289
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I'm still somewhat of a newb with macs since I only switched over early this year so I was wondering about future OS's. Will Apple continue to upgrade these 10.5, 10.6 and so on until they hit 11 or will their be a jump somewhere. What has happened in the past?
 
in the past it was when i believe the core was changed (7.5 (i think) went to 8.0, 8.6.6 went to 9.0, and 9.2 went to X)

But Apple has made a lot on the theme of being X so i believe they will go up to 10.9 unless something happens that they change the core a lot.
 
OS X is a marketable brand, so they'll probably go to OS 10.6/7/8.

Past:
7.6.x
8.6.x
9.2.2
 
eva01 said:
in the past it was when i believe the core was changed (7.5 (i think) went to 8.0, 8.6.6 went to 9.0, and 9.2 went to X)
Nope, they ported 7.5 to the PPC and released it as 7.6
 
greenguy4 said:
what kind of major changes were made between 8-9 or 9-10?
OS 10 was a complete rewrite, not 1 line of code was kept, whole new GUI, whole new core, whole new everything!
 
link92 said:
Nope, they ported 7.5 to the PPC and released it as 7.6

thanks i couldn't remember what the last 7 was.

and greenguy4 the change from those OSes were DRASTIC to say the least
 
eva01 said:
thanks i couldn't remember what the last 7 was.

and greenguy4 the change from those OSes were DRASTIC to say the least
Got 7.6 installed on a PPC 7200/75 upstairs ;)
 
link92 said:
OS 10 was a complete rewrite, not 1 line of code was kept, whole new GUI, whole new core, whole new everything!
Actually, huge amounts of code from System 1.0 through OS 9.2.2 were kept. All of QuickDraw, for example. And most of the code from Carbon apps, including the Finder.

As for the X thing, Apple will keep that as long as they can, even when they get to version 11 (and no, it won't be called OS XI); the WWDC 2003 build of Panther, for example, was labeled "OS X version 11". It was later that they decided on 10.3 (or it could have been before, just after the CDs went to press). In doing so, Apple made a marketing gambit; they dumped the ability to say it's a new major version of the OS (though they do their best to convince people that is a new major version (which it is)) in order to avoid confusing consumers with something like OS X version 11 or OS X version 12 (getting rid of the X was out of the question, marketing-wise). Personally, I would have gone the other way, but then I don't run Apple's marketing dept.
 
eva01 said:
thanks i couldn't remember what the last 7 was.

and greenguy4 the change from those OSes were DRASTIC to say the least

Well, definitely between 9 and 10. But 8.6-9 wasn't very drastic at all*, except for the addition of Sherlock 2 and AppleScript over TCP/IP**. 8.1-8.5, 8.5-8.6, and 9.0.4-9.1 were much, much, more so.

*Given this, why did they change it, one might ask? Marketing. They thought Sherlock 2 and AppleScript/TCP/IP were big enough on their own for a new brand name. Their coders thought, until marketing stepped in, that they were developing 8.7; in fact, if you try to use the OS 9.0 version of DVD Player on an 8.6 system, the error message is "This application requires Mac OS 8.7 or later to run."

**plus a few things that were either gimicks, or didn't really work right until 9.1, like Multiple Users and the voiceprint password system.
 
link92 said:
Nope, they ported 7.5 to the PPC and released it as 7.6
Huh? It was during the reign of System 7.1 that Apple transitioned to the PPC. System 7.5 was the first new version of the OS after the transition. System 7.5 incorporated a lot of Copland (System 8) technology in the OS. IIRC, MacOS 7.6 was the OS designed for the clones. MacOS 8.1 was the last that ran on any version of the 680x0 processor. MacOS 8.5 and later were all PPC-exclusive.
 
GeeYouEye said:
**plus a few things that were either gimicks, or didn't really work right until 9.1, like Multiple Users and the voiceprint password system.


Voiceprint Password System?
 
MisterMe said:
Huh? It was during the reign of System 7.1 that Apple transitioned to the PPC. System 7.5 was the first new version of the OS after the transition. System 7.5 incorporated a lot of Copland (System 8) technology in the OS. IIRC, MacOS 7.6 was the OS designed for the clones. MacOS 8.1 was the last that ran on any version of the 680x0 processor. MacOS 8.5 and later were all PPC-exclusive.
/me forgot :rolleyes:
 
greenguy4 said:
so does anyone know what the Voiceprint Password System is??

The Voiceprint Password System was something that was in OS 9. It was a startup password where instead of typing your password you said "My voice is my password" and it compared your voiceprint to one on file. Although if it didn't get it after 2 tries it prompted you to enter your password manualy. Kind of a neat idea, I used it for about a week, then it got anoying. I don't believe it exists in OS X.
 
Ya I thought it was something like that and it sounded REALLY COOL...Too bad they did away with this. Anyone know if you can download it as a plug in?
 
greenguy4 said:
I'm still somewhat of a newb with macs since I only switched over early this year so I was wondering about future OS's. Will Apple continue to upgrade these 10.5, 10.6 and so on until they hit 11 or will their be a jump somewhere. What has happened in the past?

Since 10.9 is still several years away, it may not be something that Apple is really thinking about now. "XI" would not have nearly the marketing and aesthetic appeal of the current campaign. Maybe they'll change it to "XX" instead. Or maybe they'll go with OS names instead, just "Tiger" and no number. In various ways they could slow down their small updates and really extend the 10.x.x series for a long time if they didn't have a plan.

It might depend on which side of the bed Steve gets up on the day of the meeting.
 
greenguy4 said:
I'm still somewhat of a newb with macs since I only switched over early this year so I was wondering about future OS's. Will Apple continue to upgrade these 10.5, 10.6 and so on until they hit 11 or will their be a jump somewhere. What has happened in the past?

There will definitely be a 10.5, beyond that its hard to be certain. A 10.6 is likely, but they get less likely after that. Apple is moving to release updates every 2-2.5 years, as opposed to 12-18 months like they've been doing. So that means a 10.7 would come out after 2010...by then computing could look totally different, so its hard to say that they won't be releasing OS XI instead of OS X 10.7.

The upgrade from 7 to 8 was pretty major. OS8 was a compromise release because Apple had promised a modern OS for a long time and failed to deliver. OS8 had a much different GUI and lots of new features under the hood. OS8 to 9 was much less important. Honestly I can't even remember what OS9 had.. OS X was huge, of course, probably as significant an upgrade as OS7 was.
 
My guess is they'll use up their two remaining registered trademarks: Cougar and Lynx, then move on to a full 64-bit OS 11.
 
link92 said:
My guess is they'll use up their two remaining registered trademarks: Cougar and Lynx, then move on to a full 64-bit OS 11.

They've trademarked those?

And i thought the next would be ocelot, or something like that....

But mainly i agree, although theyve cornered themselves slightly...XI doesnt really work...maybe they'll completely switch to using the codenames as market names, just like they've recently done with Tiger and Panther...
 
aloofman said:
Since 10.9 is still several years away, it may not be something that Apple is really thinking about now. "XI" would not have nearly the marketing and aesthetic appeal of the current campaign. Maybe they'll change it to "XX" instead. Or maybe they'll go with OS names instead, just "Tiger" and no number. In various ways they could slow down their small updates and really extend the 10.x.x series for a long time if they didn't have a plan.
Of course, they don't need to stop at 10.9 – there's no reason they can't go onto 10.10, 10.11 and so on.
 
Jaffa Cake said:
Of course, they don't need to stop at 10.9 – there's no reason they can't go onto 10.10, 10.11 and so on.

Please dear LORD, not the freakin' numerical argument again.
 
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