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SubscribeWill Apple's OS X be stopping at 10.6?
Being a bit of a Mac fan, I casually mentioned to my wife the upcoming (and generally eagerly awaited) Macworld conference. I then went on to mention that I'll be buying Leopard when it comes out.
Julie's response: Didn't you buy it last year?
Me: No, that was Tiger.
Julie: How many big cats are there?
Good point!
Leopard is due out this spring, so I popped over to Wikipedia to see what big cats had been used by Apple so far:
- Mac OS X 10.0 - Cheetah
- Mac OS X 10.1 - Puma
- Mac OS X 10.2 - Jaguar
- Mac OS X 10.3 - Panther
- Mac OS X 10.4 - Tiger
- Mac OS X 10.5 - Leopard
By my reckoning (and little more Wikipedia browsing), the only big cat left is the Lion.
There are others: the Snow Leopard and Clouded Leopard - but I ruled them out because, well, we're going have Leopard this year...and we don't want to repeat do we?
There's also an Onza, but a) I'm not sure very many people will realise this is (supposed to be) classed as a big cat, and b)
Texas Tech University researchers concluded that the onza is most likely a genetic variant of puma, but not a distinct cat species
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onza
So, all in all it sounds like Lion should be next, and then...what? The end of OS X? The end of big kitty codenames?
I think some cat loving Apple employee might just be foregoing his next Christmas bonus! I can here them now...[cue fantasy sequence]...
What do you mean there's no more big cats left? What did you think we would do a "Microsoft Word" and just make the numbers up? †
† i.e. MS Word 1, 2, 6, 7, 8...etc.
Either way - I'm looking forward to what Apple can pull out of the bag.
Oh, and just to cover myself here, obviously this is all a bit tongue in cheek! 
You should follow me on Twitter here I'll tweet about JavaScript, HTML 5 and other such gems (amongst usual tweet-splurges)
%7Cutmcsr%3D(direct)%7Cutmcmd%3D(none)%3B%2B__utmv%3D75373319.-%3B)
Or maybe they could switch over to food! I mean, cats are on their way out. The whole animal theme...on it's way out. Plus, their name is apple. So we could have like 11.0 Cheesecake, 11.1 Latte, 11.2 Chicken Vindaloo....
I sure hope they get more creative...
I was thinking they could use Lynx. Sounds pretty cool.
How about snake names, such as VIPER, MAMBA, RACER, DIAMONDBACK, COPPERHEAD, etc.
I think Bobcat! or Domestic.
Or maybe they'll change to types of Domestic cats.
Siamese, Bengal.
I think lion is maybe the only ''big cat'' left so probably its gonna be the next os x
but for os 11 they could make a ''big dogs'' series with names like (pitbull,rotvailer,wolfdog,Labrador)and stuff like that
Or maybe they will start calling it FreeBSD and stop pretending they wrote the kernel AND stop forgetting to properly backport useful changes - troll troll troll.
caracal too?
i really hate cats, so i wish they would seriously stop.
I heard a rumor that Apple and VW are working on a vehicle together, co-designing. I know that an upcoming model name is the "Tiguan" a cross between Tiger and Iguana (thank the UK market for naming this US-export small SUV). I can see it now. Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Tiguan FREE with any Volkswagen Tiguan purchase, works on ANY Computer! OR you can get the special Apple Limited Edition VW Tiguan in gunmetal with pinstriped seats with a Mac Mini as the ECU for the whole vehicle....
the possibilities are endless, really.
Cougars and Pumas are virtually the same species, so I doubt that Cougar would be used for 10.6 - it would be like recycling. Probably Lion or Lynx
Hey, also Garfield is a "big" cat...
Actually cougars, pumas, and panthers are all pretty much the same. Not to mention in south America panther is used in reference to jaguars, which is a reference to leopards. Out of the four classic "big cats" they used all and reused at least one. So yeah they don't seem to care about reusing species.
They could also move to another genus - like birds. Imagine OS X 10.7 Eagle. Or maybe by then it'll be time for OS XI
Sphinx reminds me of sphincter...
For 11 I think it might be kinda cool to choose the gods of greek mythology... like OS XI Zeus, Poseidon, Athena, etc.
It's possible after naming a few cats like Lynx, Cougar, and/or Lion, that they would go back into bears. I mean, take a look at Mac OS X Public Beta, that was nicknamed after the Brown Bear "Kodiak". Maybe they'll go with Brown Bears like Grizzly, Marsican, Bergman, etc. But then again, those are weird names for OS's. So are Big Cat's I suppose.
They should go with Cultural Movements like Mac OS X1 - "Graeco, Nominalism, Renaissance. Baroque, Realism, Nouveau, etc."
I don't know... Steve will figure something out.
personally,
i hope and trust that there will be a 'huge leap forward' with the years directly following 'leopard, cougar, and (last, of course), lion...doubtless apple intends to deliver an iphone sized mac within a couple of years, so things will change a lot. think about machines where you're using the multitouch when you're mobile, you're gonna want the same capabilties when it's docked to its monitor, keyboard, whatever... so that's probably what they're thinking for OS XI.
Don't use Lynx. It looks it a glance like Linux and Mac already has enough hints that they're copying off Linux.
Apple has registered the trademarks Lynx and Cougar, so it's probably going to be one of them. But they never registered Cheetah, Puma or Jaguar.
I would like to see sabertooth and kzin for future OS X updates. As for OS 11, that is very unlikely to happen, at least not for a long time. Unix is a stable operating system. The changes that Apple are making are incremental, not evolutionary. It is very unlikely that Apple has something beyond unix sitting in their development labs.