Talk:macOS

"Previously MacOS X"...?

Why is this phrase included: "previously Mac OS X and later OS X", and particularly right after the first word of the entry? "X" is the roman numeral for 10, and the X version of the operating system (OS) followed the 9 version (Mac OS 9). The previous versions of the operating system running on Apple computers were referred to "Mac OS" with a number, so weren't they also "macOS"? (Mac OS 9, Mac OS 8, Mac OS 7, etc.) If the intent is to clarify the name/branding change of the operating system, it should be written differently (and probably not so close to the start of the page --> like move to the second (or 12th, 40th, "X"-number) paragraph. - Hooperswim (talk) 19:47, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

The name "Mac OS" was, allegedly, created when Apple started its program to encourage Macintosh clones; the intent may have been to provide branding for the OS, separate from the hardware.

"Mac OS X" was probably picked as a name to suggest continuity with the earlier OSes with "Mac OS" in their names, even though Mac OS X was a new OS.

I have no idea what the intent behind dropping "Mac" was, other than perhaps a notion that "OS X" would also be the name for the OS on the iPhone (Jobs apparently said "iPhone runs OS X" when it was announced), but that was dropped in favor of 'iPhone OS".

"macOS" was probably picked to suggest a family relationship with the other initial-lower-caseOSes that Apple has.

So "Mac OS" and "macOS" may share "mac" and "OS", but they have different origins, so I'm not sure I'd say that the pre-NeXTStEP OSes for Mac were "also macOS".

And, yes, the name of the first NeXTStEP derivative for Mac matched the same pattern as the names of the last few major releases of the pre-NeXTStEP OSes, but that was for marketing reasons - classic Mac OS and Mac OS X are extremely different OSes, so calling Mac OS X just "Mac OS" would be a bit misleading. Guy Harris (talk) 20:27, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

I always supposed that the renaming was a tacit admission by Apple that there would never be an "OS XI" MFNickster (talk) 10:08, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

That probably wasn't the intent of the renaming, but it does serve that purpose (just as Sun's switching from "Solaris 2.N" to just "Solaris N" does, although, in the early days, there was some notion of a Shiny New Solaris 3 at some point in the future; I forget the details of the idea, as that was over 30 years ago, but I think "object-oriented" was floating around there somewhere - maybe "microkernel" as well). Guy Harris (talk) 11:16, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I think it is a good time to reopen this debate, since that Big Sur will be ver. 11.0. It's macOS, but definitely not a "Mac OS X". 2A02:8388:180C:7E00:B9DB:67A7:7852:5CEF (talk) 22:20, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

What is the debate, exactly? Currently named macOS and previously named Mac OS X and then OS X is still correct. Big Sur will be version 11, but Apple does not refer to it as "macOS 11" anywhere on their preview page or WWDC page. MFNickster (talk) 01:50, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Apple does refer to "macOS 11" in some places in the developer documentation, such as this page in the Human Interface Guidelines and in the Big Sur beta 1 release notes.

However, given that, apparently, it was "10.16" until fairly recently, there's nothing particularly exciting about the version number change; it does not betoken a Huge Change that means it's not the latest incarnation of The Operating System Formerly Known As Mac OS X And Then OS X, it's just a marketing move, just like the move from Mac OS X to OS X or from OS X to macOS. Perhaps they're just saying it's an Exciting UI Redesign or something such as that, or perhaps they're tired of explaining what that extra "10." crap is in front of the version number and want to just give it a version number that increments for every major release, just as the other *OSes have.

Yes, some journalists and fanboys might get all stirred up, but the journalists have to do something to get the circulation numbersclicks up, and the fanboys have to do something to keep themselves busy.

So, no, there's no debate to be had here, not that there ever was a debate to be had. Apple's marketing departments periodically have to justify their existence, like marketing departments for other companies that produce OSes, so they periodically tweak names and version numbers to convince their paymasters that they're performing a useful function. Guy Harris (talk) 07:11, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for that info. It will be interesting to see where Apple goes with this. MFNickster (talk) 12:58, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

My issue with this is not "Apple Marketing says it is 11". If you say "macOS, previously OS X", you can say it's initial release date was ~19 years ago, and you are explicitly talking about the version 10 (= X in Roman numerals). If you extend it to version 11, it's, for me, semantically wrong to say, it was first released 19 years ago. 2A02:8388:180C:7E00:68D8:E699:6535:BF99 (talk) 14:09, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

"If you extend it to version 11, it's, for me, semantically wrong to say, it was first released 19 years ago." Not for me; it's just a marketing department monkeying around with names. The code base is the same, the APIs are the same, etc.. And, for all we know, next year's release could be "macOS 12", in which case all they've done is switch from having an "X" in the name and a "10" preceding the major version number to having the first component of the version number be the major version number, in which case it's similar to Solaris, where they went from calling the SunOS 5-based OS "Solaris 2.x", with "x" changing with every major release, to "Solaris x", with "x" changing with every major release. Guy Harris (talk) 18:19, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Version numbers is and has been always a more marketing thing than technical. Windows 10, 8.1, 8 has being on Windows NT for a while. There are all major versions with own Wikipedia pages. They share the code base and the APIs. Heck, you can even find some interface elements from Windows 3.1 in Windows 10. Windows 10 page doesn't and shouldn't read "Windows 10, previously Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista... Released July 27, 1993; 26 years ago". That will be just very, very weird. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8388:180C:7E00:9807:FDA9:ABEE:24CE (talk) 12:19, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it would be very, very weird if the macOS Big Sur page said "previously macOS Catalina, macOS, High Sierra, ...".

Microsoft's marketing department, like Apple's marketing department, have done a significant amount of rebranding of the OS, going from "Windows NT x.y" to "Windows 2000" to "Windows XP" to "Windows Vista" to "Windows x.y" to "Windows 10, now with rolling releases". The Wikipedia pages for the various versions of Windows NT describe most of the versions as operating systems, rather than releases of operating systems, and describe Windows 10 as "a series of operating systems". The pages for the various versions of Apple's current UNIX-for-Macs all refer to them as releases of that OS, noting the name changes of the OS in parentheses.

But, the way the articles for various versions of Windows NT and macOS are written notwithstanding, the best model is that "Windows NT" and "macOS" are equivalents, with the sequence "Windows NT 3.1", "Windows NT 3.5", "Windows "Windows NT 4.0", "Windows 2000", ..., "Windows 10" being equivalent to the sequence "Mac OS X 10.0", "Mac OS X 10.1", "Mac OS X Jaguar", "Mac OS X Panther", ..., "OS X Mountain Lion", "OS X Mavericks", ..., "macOS Catalina", "macOS Big Sur".

And, no, the "X" in "Mac OS X" is not best thought of as a version number; it's best thought of as the equivalent of "NT" in "Windows NT" - a marker to indicate a major change in the underlying OS. "Mac OS X 10.0" was the first release of the new OS, not the tenth release of "Mac OS", just as "Windows NT 3.1" was the first release of the new OS, not the first update to the third release of the new OS. Eventually, just as Microsoft dropped "NT" from the names of OS versions in Windows 2000, Apple dropped the "X", going from "OS X" to "macOS" in Sierra. Guy Harris (talk) 18:51, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Now I get where you're coming from and I now can understand your train of thought. Yet, I have to say: I read X as a version number. Therefore for me, "macOS (now on ver. 11), previously OS X" sounds wrong. With title "macOS", I see the page the equivalent of "Windows" and not "Windows NT", it sounded like "Windows, previously Windows NT". Maybe something like "(Modern) macOS, formally marketed with version number 10 in Roman numerals as OS X ..." perhaps will help with the ambiguity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2a02:8388:180c:7e00:f158:f520:61d:5d7f (talk) 21:41, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

"Modern" macOS, as distinguished from what? There was a "Mac OS" (which previously had other names; see classic Mac OS), the last release of which was Mac OS 9, and then there was Apple's current UNIX-for-Macs, currently known as "macOS" (which previously also had other names). Guy Harris (talk) 22:00, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, a more important point is technology rather than version numbering. The Mac OS X series (2001-present) form a series: a "modern" operating system with pre-emptive multi-tasking. The old Mac OS (1984-1999) form a series: a simple OS designed to run fast on slow computers. I think I'm right in saying there's conceptually far more similarity between the first OS X version (2001) and Big Sur today than there is between that first OS X version and the "classic" Mac OS 9 directly preceding it. That's clearly what Cook thinks: in his quick Mac history lecture he listed three big transitions in the Mac platform, and only one of them was an OS transition: classic to Mac OS X. The fact that macOS incremented version number wasn't even mentioned (indeed, I didn't notice it on the livestream, and nor did TechCrunch: they posted an article announcing macOS 10.16-check the URL-and I included that in the article at first). As for the X as a version number: branding is branding, and these things can get changed. Marcin Wichary has shown a switfly-killed graphic from Apple's website that briefly described Panther as Mac OS X version 11 (although I'm a bit confused about why this was put on their website in 2005, unless it was left over from before Panther launched). Blythwood (talk) 04:15, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

I'd agree that it's really the same operating system (based on the technology) gone through several revisions and renamings. The article lead says right off the bat that it's a "series of operating systems," but it would be kind of silly to say "Mac OS X" is one series, "OS X" is another series, and "macOS" yet another. MFNickster (talk) 05:47, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

"I think I'm right in saying there's conceptually far more similarity between the first OS X version (2001) and Big Sur today than there is between that first OS X version and the "classic" Mac OS 9 directly preceding it." In terms of being a Unix-based OS under the hood, and in terms of particular aspects of its appearance ("traffic light" buttons top left of every window for example), then yes I agree. However, Big Sur has a lot of phased similarities with iOS and has changed in so many ways since OS X 10.0. Another way of looking at it would be to say that OS X 10.0 was a very radical UI redesign of OS 9 - on the surface - but with less power and fewer features than OS 9 had. Many of those were added in the next 3 or 4 releases, but it has taken some giant steps since then. 78.144.205.77 (talk) 22:15, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

"However, Big Sur has a lot of phased similarities with iOS and has changed in so many ways since OS X 10.0." So has macOS 10.15 Catalina. What makes Big Sur special? Guy Harris (talk) 23:35, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

I think the most important thing is how Apple has been treating the versions of the OS. And from all documentation, private and public, and all marketing, it's very clear that Apple is treating macOS Big Sur as a continuation of the macOS line of OSes introduced to the public in 2001. The name or number changing doesn't change that fact. Mac OS 9 was not a different OS from Mac OS 8 simply because the major number changed, just like iOS 14 isn't a different OS from iOS 13 just because of the major number changing. In Apple's marketing at WWDC, they called it "The biggest change to macOS since the release of Mac OS X in 2001" (or something along those lines). That statement should make it unambiguous that Apple refers to macOS Big Sur as a major update to macOS, but NOT a different OS. I respect your opinion and the dissenters' opinions that macOS Big Sur is a huge change that is on par to the release of a completely different OS. But frankly and respectfully, Wikipedia isn't the place for personal opinions. We are here to present and uphold the truth and the facts, and in this case, that's what the company says (not to mention that Big Sur sharing the same base as every release of macOS that preceded it). macOS Big Sur is the 17th release of macOS. That's just the fact. Herbfur (talk) 01:54, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

There are plenty of references in the article that say, the name changes coincided with a change in leadership after Scott Forestall botched the Maps release. Under Craig Federighi, they stopped naming each release after big cats, and as of Big Sur, even increments the Major version to 11, instead of a 16th or 17th release of macOS 10. Shencypeter (talk) 05:13, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

X is a Roman numeral but it also signifies macOS's roots from Steve Jobs's NEXTSTEP operating system. Shencypeter (talk) 05:15, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

The section "OS X" says "In 2012, with the release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, the name of the system was shortened from Mac OS X to OS X. That year, Apple removed the head of OS X development, Scott Forstall, and design was changed towards a more minimal direction." For Lion, Apple sometimes spoke of "Mac OS X" and sometimes spoke of "OS X", so the transition was starting before 2012; it wasn't consistent until Mountain Lion, but it was sometimes used for Lion.

"and as of Big Sur, even increments the Major version to 11, instead of a 16th or 17th release of macOS 10". It's the 17th release of Apple's UNIX-for-Macs, an OS that was renamed twice - "Mac OS X" to "OS X" to "macOS".

"X is a Roman numeral but it also signifies macOS's roots from Steve Jobs's NEXTSTEP operating system." Citation needed. Guy Harris (talk) 09:55, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-deep-history-of-your-apps-steve-jobs-nextstep-and-early-object-oriented-programming/ Shencypeter (talk) 11:56, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I looked for all occurrences of the letter "x" in that article, and saw nothing whatsoever to indicate that the "X" in "Mac OS X" and "OS X" had anything whatsoever to do with NEXTSTEP. Guy Harris (talk) 17:27, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

There is no "macOS 10" or "macOS 11". It's just "macOS". It's literally just a branding change. It's not a different operating system. The fact that it coincided with a leadership change doesn't mean anything. Herbfur (talk) 15:39, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

And the next update to Big Sur is apparently macOS 11.1 - the first beta is 11.1 beta - so the next major release after Big Sur might be macOS 12. If the era of macOS 10 is over, and the era of macOS 11 is beginning, the latter era may last only one year....

More likely, this is just Apple's "Solaris 7" moment, where they stop pretending that there will be some next-generation new OS coming after Mac OS X/OS X/macOS, and have the first component of the version number increase with every major release. (Sun started with the SunOS 4.x-based Solaris 1.y and the SunOS 5.x-based Solaris 2.x, with the latter names going up to Solaris 2.6, but the next SunOS 5-based release was Solaris 7, not Solaris 2.7; Solaris 7 was based on SunOS 5.7.) Guy Harris (talk) 19:08, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

MacOS 11?

Is there going to be a new page made for macOS 11, or is it still considered a macOS 10 version? Pix12 (talk) 12:17, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

It's just 'macOS' now, not OS X or Mac OS X. If Apple announces a 'macOS 11' or 'Mac OS XI' then sure. MFNickster (talk) 14:58, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Well, there is a macOS 11, or macOS 11.0, but we already have a page for macOS 11.0. Whether Big Sur's successor will be macOS 11.1 (continuing in the numbering scheme for Apple's current UNIX-for-Macs) or macOS 12 (following the numbering scheme for Apple's other Darwin-based OSes) is as yet unknown (and probably won't be known until this time next year).

But the page for "Mac OS X", "OS X", and "macOS", regardless of version number, is just macOS, as noted. Guy Harris (talk) 19:05, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Before you read further, I just want to say that everything past this sentence up until the semicolon is not guaranteed to be accurate since I'm not old enough to have experienced it. I'd argue that this article was designed just for the 10.x Versions. The last time the first number in the version number incremented was before Wikipedia existed so this is literally the first time this had happened. OS X was originally presented as the 10th Major version of the OS. The term "Classic Mac OS" is a retronym that likely didn't exist right as Cheetah came out and the difference between Cheetah and Puma was probably initially seen as like between 9.0 and 9.1. I would say it wasn't until Panther or Tiger that people realized these were major versions rather than incremental updates and at that point it was when the term "Classic Mac OS" was conceived; If the versions were to be classified by generations, then the Classic Mac OS would be the first generation and the 10.X versions were the second, while the 11.X or 11+ versions, depending on what the 2021 Mac OS will be called, would be the third generation. At WWDC it was shown to be version 11.0 rather than 10.16 which is probably what some people were expecting. Let's give the OS 11 generation it's own article or third generation of Mac OS depending on what's next. Subscribe to me (talk) 19:31, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Apple very clearly see the change in major version number from 10 to 11 to be symbolic of the Mac platform moving forward, but still a fairly minor thing. It wasn't even mentioned in the keynote, you just saw it in an "About this Mac" dialog box. I don't see it as a huge amount more than an Easter Egg. The real breakthrough was classic Mac OS to OS X, and the arrival of true pre-emptive multitasking. (I'm also...well, not too young to have used classic Mac OS, but they were very rare in the mid-late 1990s unless owned by people with jobs like graphic design who had already bought into the Mac platform by the early 1990s. I've only ever seen screenshots/videos, I don't think I ever used one until I played with one in a museum in 2017.) Blythwood (talk) 20:13, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Blythwood. Apple makes it pretty clear that this is a symbolic change and Big Sur is not a new OS. Herbfur (talk) 20:33, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

What if the 2021 macOS is called 12.0? Will the heads of everybody who thinks this particular release is The Next Generation(TM) explode?

Such a change would not be unheard of. When Sun introduced the term "Solaris", they labeled the SunOS 4.x-based versions of Solaris "Solaris 1.y" and the SunOS 5.x-based versions of Solaris "Solaris 2.y". There was some thought at Sun (before the "Solaris" name was introduced, and possibly after, as I left before the "Solaris" name was introduced) of a "next generation" of Solaris (microkernel, object-oriented, and otherwise buzzword-compliant); perhaps that's what they thought would be Solaris 3. Eventually, they appear to have realized that there would probably never be a "Solaris 3", so they went from "Solaris 2.6" to "Solaris 7" rather than "Solaris 2.7".

And there's nothing different between Catalina and Big Sur that's anywhere near to the magnitude of the difference between classic Mac OS and Mac OS X; the latter change justifies the notion of the classic Mac OS and Mac OS X being different generations, but some UI changes (there have been UI changes throughout the history of Mac OS X/OS X/macOS) and support for a new hardware platform (that had already happened in the history of Mac OS X/OS X/macOS with the Intel-based Macs) doesn't justify calling Big Sur the first of a next generation.

(And note that, in some places, Big Sur did identify itself as 10.16, and, as per the "Third-Party Apps" section of the Big Sur beta release notes, there's a hack to force Big Sur to pretend it's still 10.x, for the benefit of third-party scripts.)

So there's no indication that this somehow represents a Next Generation, rather than just some marketing-department tweaking (which they've done several times before, with the introduction of the "Mac OS" name when the Mac cloning program was introduced, the mysterious dropping of "Mac", and the switch to "macOS"), perhaps to get macOS in line with its siblings, which change the first component, rather than the second component, of the version number when a new release comes out (and to allow small bug-fix software updates to be dot-dot releases, as with everythingelseOS, rather than "Supplemental Updates").

So let's not give Big Sur and successors their own article until some solid reasons exist to consider them to represent Something Big And Different. Guy Harris (talk) 20:38, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

What I'm saying is seemingly when this article was first created in 2002, it was under the assumption that Mac OS 11 would never happen and for the next 18 years it was edited as such. When the OS was first introduced it was assumed at the time the next major release of the Mac OS would be OS 11 and after that OS 12 and so on. At WWDC 2005 Steve said that PowerPC set up Apple for a decade, and it was a decade after it that. Less than a minute later he said Mac OS X set up apple for the next 20 years. And 2020 is the 20th year. People probably held the belief that System 7 would be the last version during that 6-year period. In fact, Mac OS 8 was originally going to be 7.7 and all versions until Copland were going to be 7.x. Also, there are noticeable redesigns on Big Sur that will be important to ensure iOS and iPadOS apps complement the OS. They probably didn't release OS 11 during the Intel transition since Tiger had already been released at that time. Since the architecture didn't change Yosemite probably wasn't OS 11 either. But since both the redesign and architecture change are happening simultaneously, they saw this as worthy of the new number. Apple isn't using numbers anymore in their marketing for the Mac. I would think it's a sort of megamajor release unlike anything we've seen before. This generation will run on new hardware eventually. Subscribe to me (talk) 13:28, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

The fact that people didn't think macOS 11 would arrive doesn't prove that macOS 11 is a different operating system. It wasn't edited as such that macOS 11 wouldn't arrive, it was edited according to the facts we had. This has nothing to do with whether or not macOS 11 is a different OS. What Jobs meant by "Mac OS X set up Apple for the next 20 years" is that the current foundation of macOS is so stable and advanced that it will continue to be used in 20 years. Using that statement to prove that Big Sur is a different OS is just speculation that flies in the face of everything Apple has said about Big Sur to date. Big Sur really isn't that different from Catalina on the inside, it's really not. A new OS isn't just a facelift and a ported architecture (Was Windows NT 4 a different family of OSes from Windows NT 3.51 just because it was ported to PowerPC?). It seems that your whole argument runs on your own opinion of how big a difference Big Sur makes, but to be frank, Wikipedia is NOT about personal opinions. The fact of the matter is that Big Sur is NOT a new OS. Apple makes it pretty clear that the version change is symbolic only and it's just the same macOS as always. We are an encyclopedia of facts, not opinions, and how Apple treats Big Sur makes it a FACT that Big Sur is the same OS. Herbfur (talk) 15:17, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

"What I'm saying is seemingly when this article was first created in 2002, it was under the assumption that Mac OS 11 would never happen" When this article was first created in 2002, it was under the assumption that the OS was named "Mac OS X". That assumption was made because, at the time, the OS was, in fact. named "Mac OS X".

In the Lion and Mountain Lion time frame, the name changed, and the article's name was changed to just "OS X".

In the macOS Sierra time frame, the name changed again, and the article's name was changed to "macOS".

It was also the case, for most of that time frame, that Apple chose to use version numbers that began with 10. That remained true through all name changes, including the dropping of the "X"; it finally changed with Big Sur.

"When the OS was first introduced it was assumed at the time the next major release of the Mac OS would be OS 11 and after that OS 12 and so on." Citation needed. Some people may have assumed that there might, at some point, be a "Mac OS XI" or something such as that. Whether that would be a "next major release" or a "new OS" is not at all clear. Apple changed the first component of the version number of the "Macintosh System Software" several times, as per this support article from Apple, so they were going from 1 to 2 to ... back then. This continued when the name "Mac OS" was introduced with the 7.6 release; they subsequently released version 8 and 9.

Those may have changed the major version number, but they were all continuations of the original Mac system software.

When they replaced that system software with a tweaked version of NeXTSTEP, they called the replacement "Mac OS X". That wasn't a continuation of Mac OS 9; even the name wasn't "Mac OS 10". It had its own version numbers, which had 10 as the first component, and changed the component after that each time they came out with a new version.

And now it appears they've decided to change the major version number, even though they haven't made a radical change to the OS. Whether that will continue with next year's release is, as yet, undetermined.

"At WWDC 2005 Steve said that PowerPC set up Apple for a decade, and it was a decade after it that." At WWDC 2005, Jobs stated that PowerPC set up Apple for a decade because, at that point, it was (approximately) a decade since the first PowerPC-based Macs had come out and he was announcing the x86-based Macs, so that wasn't a prediction.

"Less than a minute later he said Mac OS X set up apple for the next 20 years. And 2020 is the 20th year." That was a guess on his part; given that Apple are continuing with the same OS code base, APIs, etc. - and that the same code base was used in other OSes, including the one used in the product line that's been Apple's biggest for a while, it appears it's set up Apple for longer than that. So it's inappropriate to treat that as an indication that there would be a Shiny New OS in 2020.

"People probably held the belief that System 7 would be the last version during that 6-year period. In fact, Mac OS 8 was originally going to be 7.7 and all versions until Copland were going to be 7.x." And then Copland didn't happen, forcing Apple to do more work on the old OS, to the point that they apparently decided to continue to update the major version number. Mac OS 9 was the last version of the old OS, as they finally had a replacement that they believed (correctly) would succeed. For whatever reason, they decided, with the new OS, not to keep changing the major version number.

"Also, there are noticeable redesigns on Big Sur that will be important to ensure iOS and iPadOS apps complement the OS." There were other UI changes in previous releases to make the OS for Macs a bit more like iOS, so that's not new.

"Apple isn't using numbers anymore in their marketing for the Mac." Apple stopped using the version number as a big thing with Jaguar (10.2). That's not something new.

"I would think it's a sort of megamajor release unlike anything we've seen before." We've seen a complete replacement of the code base with Mac OS X 10.0; we'd need something bigger than that to be "unlike anything we've seen before", but what we have, instead, is more work on the same code base, so what we're seeing with Big Sur is smaller than what we saw with the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X 10.0.

"This generation will run on new hardware eventually." Presumably by "new hardware" you mean "hardware with a different instruction set", which has happened several times in the history of Apple's Macintosh operating systems. The first was the switch to PowerPC with the classic OS; that was the most disruptive such change, as the original OS had a significant amount of 68k assembler code, and many applications may have had that as well. The second was the switch to x86; that one was a change to a UNIX-based OS, so there was a lot less assembler code in the OS and apps; however, that change did have one possible disruption, namely that they switched from a big-endian processor to a little-endian processor. They also dropped support for classic Mac OS applications, so developers who hadn't gotten around to Carbonizing their apps, or switching them to Cocoa, would either have to get around to doing that, or drop the Mac. The third is the switch to ARM; that's not changing the byte order, and everybody's on Cocoa now, so this transition may be less painful, although it's always possible to make inappropriate assumptions in your code, so some code may still need to be cleaned up to remove those assumptions. In any case, it didn't require a "next generation" OS to run on the new machines. (UNIX as a portable OS dates back to at least Version 7 Unix, and UNIXes that build and run on multiple instruction sets, with applications that build and run on multiple instruction sets, have been around for quite a while.) Guy Harris (talk) 17:54, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Also, "Mac OS X set up apple for the next 20 years" says only that it will be sufficient for the next 20 years; it says nothing about what happens after that. So far, Apple's UNIX-for-Macs appears to be doing Just Fine, although Apple's UN*X-for-iPhones is the OS for their current biggest platform. Big OS Changes for general-purpose computers aren't happening much these days; the most common OSes for general-purpose computers are UN*Xes (with API and command-line continuity back to V7 in 1979), Windows NT (with API, command-line, and GUI compatibility back to 3.1 in in 1993), z/OS (dating back to OS/VS2 Multiple Virtual Storage in 1974, with API, ABI, batch job, and TSO command-line compatibility back to OS/360 in 1966, except for the "everything runs in one address space" prior to pre-MVS and the "every job step has its own address space" in MVS; the code base changed significantly in MVS), z/VSE (dating all the way back to DOS/VS in 1972, and back to DOS/360 in 1966, except for the virtual memory), z/VM and the Conversational Monitor System (dating all the way back to CP/CMS in 1968), IBM i (dating back at least to OS/400 in 1988, and at least to some degree Control Program Facility in 1978), and OpenVMS (dating back to VAX/VMS in 1977) (possibly also OS 2200 and MCP, but the platforms on which those run are now only implemented on x86 with binary-to-binary translation). I am not expecting any truly new general-purpose OS from Apple (or Microsoft or IBM or...), just updates to the existing ones and perhaps new derivatives for new platforms. Once you have a popular enough platform, you can add stuff, but you will have difficulty getting rid of stuff and, as for the code base, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". It may eventually be like a "grandfather's axe", as parts get changed or replaced, but I see no reason to believe that there will be a "next big thing" OS for the Mac.

And there's a lot of speculation about touch-screen Macs, but that's just speculation. Face ID wouldn't be a huge change to make a new OS. Guy Harris (talk) 04:04, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

11.0.1 beta just dropped, so that basically confirms that next year will be 11.1. And also this would be a clean place to split the article anyway so that we don't have this debate 5 years from now. Subscribe to me (talk) 15:31, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Nobody has given anything remotely close to a credible reason why Big Sur is the first release of a new operating system, so nobody has given anything remotely close to a credible reason to split the article. No new code base, no completely new UI, now API change, nothing. Solaris 7 was just the successor to Solaris 2.6; macOS 11.0 is just the successor to macOS 10.15. Guy Harris (talk) 16:45, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, Apple's Developer page for Big Sur is [1] and gushes that it "takes the most advanced operating system in the world to a whole new level of power and beauty." Note that it's not the debut of a new OS. Big Sur is macOS, ergo covered by this article. MFNickster (talk) 05:38, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

And, given that the first beta of the next update to Big Sur is 11.1 beta, next year's macOS may well be macOS 12. If that's the case, we already have a page for macOS 11, and will create a page for macOS 12 when it's announced next year. Guy Harris (talk) 19:11, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Finder icon macOS Yosemite.png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 10:39, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 August 2020

The section of "OS X 10.11 El Capitan"

From: OS X 10.11 El Capitan was released on September 30, 2015. Similar to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Apple described this release as containing "refinements to the Mac experience" and "improvements to system performance" rather than new features. Refinements include public transport built into the Maps application, GUI improvements to the Notes application, adopting San Francisco as the system font for clearer legibility, and the introduction of System Integrity Protection.

To: OS X 10.11 El Capitan was released on September 30, 2015. Similar to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Apple described this release as containing "refinements to the Mac experience" and "improvements to system performance" rather than new features, except the introduction of System Integrity Protection (SIP). Refinements include public transport built into the Maps application, GUI improvements to the Notes application, adopting San Francisco as the system font for clearer legibility.

Reason: The modification is to move the phrase "the introduction of System Integrity Protection" as to emphasis that it is a "new feature". People who do not like the SIP, although it adds the security, may want to stay in the Yosemite. W3!m9? (talk) 04:01, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Y Partly done. Instead of moving SIP, I've just reworded the sentence to remove the "new features" bit. There was no way Apple's going to say that there's not that many new features anyways. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (Say hi!) 13:23, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Internal demo by Jobs at Macworld 2000

Shouldn't a mention be made of the demo Jobs showed at Macworld 2000? It was (I believe) an internal demo predecessor to 10.0. Gold333 (talk) 00:04, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/os_x_aqua.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gold333 (talk • contribs) 00:43, 4 November 2020 (UTC)