Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad
The real question is how long Apple will keep with the "Mac OS X" moniker. Another five years? Ten? Apple has done a fantastic job of incrementally rewriting the core technologies of the OS to allow it to evolve without needing a singular wholesale replacement or rewrite, unless there's some top-secret new desktop metaphor hiding in the wings. So, there's probably not going to be a technical reason to change names in the near future. It would probably be a marketing-driven decision.
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Yeah...Apple's gonna have to pack in some really whiz-bang features when they finally make the jump to Mac OS XI. Or not. Maybe it will be a purely marketing-driven change, I dunno. But expectations will be high.
FWIW, I recall Jobs announcing OS X as the Mac platform "for the next fifteen years." That would put OS XI at 2016 or so, about seven years away. Of course, he could have said that merely because Mac OS Classic was approximately fifteen years old at the time.
10.5: 2007
10.6: 2009
10.7: ~2011
10.8: ~2013
10.9: ~2015
11.0: ~2016+
So it fits. And yes, I know that version numbers aren't decimals, and they could go to 10.10 if they wanted to (or go to 11.0 next year). But I don't think they'll want to.
Regarding the OP: Who's to say they'll have to name the OS XI point releases after animals at all? Hell, who's to say that they'll have to publish their codenames at all? Maybe Jobs's successor (!) will decide that naming operating systems after fuzzy animals is unprofessional and they'll just have "Mac OS XI Version 11.1". Or maybe they'll name them after planets, or flowers, or elements, or scientists, or characters from
Tintin. Hell if we know.
I agree that naming OS XI point releases after dogs seems to make sense (I would think they would do "big dogs," like wolves and such, just like they do "big cats" now, so no Yorkshire Terrier), but there's really no way we can establish a pattern with just the OS X codenames. Mac OS Classic releases were named after composers. If you asked us back then what they'd name OS X releases after, I don't think any of us would say "big cats!"