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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%3D50541476.-%3B)
the reason they use cat names is because their (almost) the fastest living creatures in the world, in this way they wonna say their OS is really fast.
if u say having cats as names denote that they're fastest,
then why they have named them in decreasing order.
Cheetah is the fastest and Leopard is the slowest big cat.
The new Mac OS: Mac OS 10.6 PolarBear! :O
I think because LEOPARD is REALLY the slowest system of all... above all after a PERFECT-10.4.11-TIGER-BUILD, i think.
I've had only trouble from the first day, with ONLY THIS big cat... oh, I know why, man!
All the Apple engineer were... on the iPhone SO!!!! -.- ...really bad... here a pussycat, there a LION in a cell... uhmmm... ok ok, i'm gettin' noisy... excuse moi! ^^
what about osx 10.6 walrus, thats out on youtube. and who ever thinks that mac is rip off of freebsd and linux, you're crazy, because i have every major operating system that people know, from solaris 10 to DSL linux, so dont think about taking your anger from windows on mac, mac was there before windows, its always been MAC
I really hope they stop with the cats! C'mon Apple! Just go to freaking OS 11! (The X is really cool tho) Hummm... But it looks like we may have enough big cats to go on for a few more years...
I think that walrus is great, but Apple would never do it, thats ridiculous. OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (100% Confirmed) doesn't sound like there will be major changes, unfortunatley, well no UI changes anyway. Lynx sounds pretty cool. I wouldnt be surprised if they used cougar or lion as well. But I think that Apple should change the name of their new OS (11) to something with a codename, not just OS XI or OS 11.
Maybe OS Raptor
Why would apple go to Mac OS 11 just because they ran out of names. The switch to 10 was the switch to BSD, and Cocoa, and since UNIX is so stable, and expandable, I doubt we will see 11 for many years.
A naming shift, however, could happen while still using 10.X. How about African animals?
10.7 Elephant
10.8 Hyena
10.9 Chimp
and my favorite
10.10 Hippopotamus
Dude first of all, we reached just until 5 osx. Cause puma and cheetah is the same os. Second of all, there will be an operating system(10.6) called snow leopard and it will be launched at 2009. Maybe they'll use the Onza or the Clouded leopard because it comes exactly 9 os versions to mac osx all & all.
My question is whenever it switches, will it be OS 11 or OS XI?
Apple has already registered "Cougar" and "Lynx" as trademarks...
checking this a couple years later and it's almost time for macworld 2009 its hilarious how you ruled out snow leopard.
My Guess:
10.6 : Snow Leopard
10.7 : Lynx
10.8 : Cougar
10.9 : Lion
10.10 : Steve Jobs
There is an Israely desert cat called Caracal, in case Apple falls into a cat shortage
Tony! No wait......never mind.
10.6 - Snow Leopard
10.7 - who the fish knows
10.8 - ?
10.9 - just wait a while
10.10 - why would they make a 10.10? it's the same as 10.1
Mac os x 10.6 is actually called snow leopard
10.6 is snow leopard and will be announced at the 2009 wwdc
there are different names other than cats..
apple is more creative to run out of names
"10.10 - why would they make a 10.10? it's the same as 10.1"
Um... No. That's not even a little bit true. You're thinking math. In MATH, those two numbers are the same. They're completely different when you're naming iterations of software.
I don't think Lynx is a good name. It's too similar to Linux.
But I would imagine that eventually Apple is going to have to upgrade to 11, or XI, or something that's not X. Because even if they were to start from scratch and still put it under the OS X name, people will eventually stop buying the updates, believing that they have something that's very nearly as good, just not as current. The thing about Apple is that sometimes the updates are huge (10.3 to 10.4) and sometimes the updates are pretty minor (10.5 to 10.6). So it's hard to know which updates you really need, and which ones would just be extra.