The big news today is the meetings Apple had with a few journalists and bloggers (or has Apple decided that bloggers, or at least John Gruber, now qualify as journalists?) where they introduced them to Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, which in theory will ship this summer. The even bigger news, to me at least, is that Apple will be updating the Mac OS on a yearly schedule so that it parallels the iOS releases. Despite all the talk of the merging of features between iOS and the Mac OS, I don't think anybody saw this coming. I'm still trying to get around to getting a Magic Trackpad so that I can get with the program when it comes to gestures. I mostly use my pre-MagicMouse MacPro, and my aging MacBook Pro's trackpad doesn't support three- or four-finger gestures. In light of the new announcement, I think I'll just wait for 10.8 and learn it all then as I'm sure there'll be new and changed gestures in the new OS.
But I've been wondering for a while where Apple was going to go with their big cat OS names after Lion. After all, the Lion is the king of the jungle so where do you go from there without it seeming like a step down? Naming the new system Mountain Lion is a bit of a dodge, just as naming 10.6 Snow Leopard was. But if Apple is switching to a once-a-year release schedule, they have the additional problem of what to number the OS after the 10.9 (Sea Lion? White Lion, or maybe just Kimba?) release. Back in the days when we were waiting for Leopard, Apple went past the normal dot-nine numbering convention by releasing 10.4.10 and even 10.4.11, so I guess they could call the presumed 2014 release OS X 10.10, but it seems kind of unwieldy from a marketing perspective. OS XI also lacks the flair of OS X. God forbid that they start naming them after the year that they're released (OS X '13 anyone?)
They do have other options. They could drop the numbering altogether (for marketing purposes anyway – I imagine some kind of numbering system would remain for technical purposes) and just go with OS X and a name (Mountain Lion or whatever). If they go this route they would still have to solve the naming situation, perhaps switching to wild animals in general (OS X Cobra? OS X Grizzly? I also came up with OS X Badger, but that would seem to have been more appropriate in the beginning of OS X when Apple seemed kind of backed into a corner.).
But the most likely scenario, to me at least, is that they tie the names of OS X and iOS together to emphasize the connection between the two and the parallel development schedule. iOS to this point has named it's major releases with simple numbers, iOS 4, iOS 5, etc. Considering that no one but us old Mac codgers remember System 6 or System 7, there's no worry with using the name OS X 6. No one's going to confuse that with the operating system from their old Mac SE. The concurrent numbering system will make it easy for users to connect the two – if they're using iOS 6 on their iPad they should use OS X 6 on their Mac to stay up to date. It's simple and it could help drive OS X sales as well as sales of Macs. It also allows Apple to retain it's investment in the branding of OS X. Eventually of course they'll reach iOS/OS X 10, but by that time most people will have forgotten, or will be able to ignore, that the X originally represented the number ten.
Of course, I'm not a genius marketer, so there's undoubtedly other, and quite possibly better, options. Apple does have genius marketers, and they could come up with something brilliant that leaves my ramblings looking as pedestrian as they probably are. So it's conceivable, even likely, that we will have a new naming/numbering convention that bears no relation to anything I've said here, and this whole post can go into the great bitbucket in the sky.
But personally, I'm holding out for Kimba.
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