Two release-date questions

1) approx 1 year after 10.9 but it might be 10.10 and not 11.
2) we have no idea, but it seems like the perfect time. It's likely to come around the same time as ios7 which is supposed to arrive late this year iirc. They'll need to drop the beta of 10.9 soonish to start ironing out some bugs.
3) yes
4) it will likely cost somewhere between $0 and $30

 

I'm fairly certain the general consensus is that 10.9 will be released -for developers- at WWDC this year.

 

1) Most likely 'still in development', although most changes that would be made would likely be in the minor nature.

2) Yes you have to be a developer ($100) but you can always use the internet to get the builds in less then legitimate ways. The Golden Master (release build, RTM is the term for Windows people) is always eventually seeded and since the GM is the public release build (same thing you'd get from downloading off the App Store) you don't have to buy the actual release when it comes around to the public.

3) Yes it would be assumed that the change would be on a larger scale. Since that's the case it's really not clear whether or not the release following 10.9 will be a continuation on the X series or the begging of XI. The X series is now I believe 11 or 12 years old now, maybe if a decision is made to attempt something akin to Windows 8 that could be the jump from X to XI but aside from that I see no real reason to branch out of X to XI.

 

The next major OS version is 10.9, and will be released later this year.
If you want a clear indication of the kind of things to expect, look at the new features introduced with 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8. (Wikipedia has a good summary of each version of OS X, as well as various tech web news sites.)

You can buy the latest version of OS X at the same price if you have 10.6 or if you have 10.7 or 10.8. You don't pay an incremental price. Point updates are free.

It is not a good idea to run a beta version simply to gain early access to new features. Beta versions may cause crashes, may not work with some applications, and should be only used for testing.
Many people wait for the first (or second, or third) update to a new OS release in order to get a version with bugs ironed out and with greater stability.

 

See bolded.. Wouldn't that be PUMA? PUMA was 10.1, 10.10 is technically the same and would cause confusion...

 

If 10.10 and 10.1 is really that confusing they could just call the release build 10.10.0

Really I don't see how you could confuse 10.10 and 10.1 that would be like saying version 1 is the same as version 10 because they both start with a 1. On top of that the average user probably doesn't give a single **** what version number their OS is, it could be 10.192.121383.11123.1 for all they care.