NOPE! Here is a reference for you
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/209788/Can+an+older+OS+be+installed+on+a+brand+new+MacBook
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It’s called macOS 11 because it has a major design change, just like it did going from OS 9 to OS X.
Apple started wth iDevices and iApps in 2001 (the same year they introduced Mac OS X) and they both had long runs - they ran their course (except for iMac) and got dropped (iBook, iPod) or renamed (iMessage, iTunes)
Some slogans and names age well, some don’t, but most have finite lives.
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I liked the old title. 
I think you’ve created an interesting topic and am sorry it’s been one-sided in response (realizing I contributed.) My initial impression of the design was entirely positive. I think it’s going to look good on the screen sizes I typically use (15” laptops and 27” monitors.) I also like the new icons quite a bit. But, I am also concerned about information density and animation/affordance fatigue. Being macOS, I think we’ll have some control over those things, but I still understand not wanting to see them in the first place. I also have some concern about the UI and the ported iOS apps being an indicator that macOS may stray from what makes it special, but overall, I think the attention Apple is paying to the Mac is good for professional and power users.
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I’m not a Californian either and I concur. Big Sur is magical and a terrific major jewel of California.
I had my thirtieth birthday camping in those woods.
Finally, as for marketing, I wonder if the tie in for the name is this rather momentous transition. It’s a “big,” grandious change, after all.
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@Timo I think you might be onto something, Big Sur is quite famous for the Bixby Canyon Bridge. Given the big transition they need and the associated bridging technology, could be a few depths to this choice.
They’ve chosen a good time to move to MacOS 11, as the Arm transition and deeper unification of the operating systems across the product range warrants the number rollover.
PS - Guess we are lucky they didn’t choose Tarzana, Rough and Ready, Forks of Salmon, Zzyzx or Death Valley.
As to the name, I don’t really care one way or the other. Marketing types would typically steer clear of anything that would map to a negative headline quickly, so I’m surprised this one made it through.
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Introducing MacOS 11 Bakersfield!
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The OS itself (ignoring cosmetic changes and a few features added to a few Apple apps) is basically unchanged at this point. A far cry from going from OS 9 to OS X which was a total overhaul. You might say that considering the support for ARM CPUs this is more like the change from 10.4 Tiger to 10.5 Leopard which added support for Intel CPUs. And they didn’t rename it Mac OS 11 then.
This is simply a marketing decision, not based on the underlying design. And it looks like a last minute one as well as there are references to 10.16 they didn’t remove in time for beta release.
Design criticisms? At least in dark mode, I’m finding it very hard to see the buttons/icons in the title bars and I don’t like the fact that the folder name in Finder is buried within the title bar making it difficult to spot.
Come on. You all know it.
MacOS 11 Spinal Tap.
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I agree that, design-wise, a continuity between OS X and OS 11 is basically there – certainly more than from OS 9 to OS X.
But on the other hand, the ability to run iOS apps natively – because of the underlying processor switch – really invites speculation on the UI of future OSs … and those changes aren’t solely advertising-driven.
Or perhaps “marketing” – marketing meant here less as of how to advertise seductively, and more in the sense of strategy: how to use the enormous size of the iOS ecosystem to draw more people to MacOS – at Apple pushed for the ecosystem change, and UI design is following suit.
The first step has been to make the feel of MacOS 11 a little more like the feel of iOS apps on iPhone or iPad; and I doubt it’s the last step.
I completely agree. I have nothing against cosmetic changes, but a design change to me means something is fundamentally different in the core of something and I don’t see that as being the case here.
(I get similarly weirded out when people talk about hardware design changes and what they mean is a change of shape/appearance (which is absolutely a kind of design change, but not what I think about when that language is used))
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No it isn’t really. Big Sur is pretty famous. Like “High Sierra” it has all kinds of connotations and resonances culturally including a film I believe with Bogart. A kind of Wild Western connotation with “High Plains Drifter” and all kinds things. Which Apple ad folk would have considered. They have done an amazing PR job in my view.
California and its culture (s) and terms thereof being pretty widely understood all over the World. I think I heard of Big Sur when I was about 9 and living in rural Wales. Monterey too. It is pretty obviously “All noun” as well. If I might put it that way? In the way “Little Big Horn” is. The use of a name with a Spanish borrow is again appropriate and subtle. Easy to do in California I know, but that would have been noted by the team that did it I think?
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Or, if you want to be alliterative, maOS Salton Sea.
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Yes. “Apple invented this brilliant piece of marketing a decade ago. On the back of the iPhone it says: “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.” I really like the idea that California is its own country, on par with China. Yes, Apple stuff is manufactured in China by robot-like young people in precision synchrony, but it is designed — that high art — in California — where the sun always shines — by wild haired groovy mac guys who like to question authority. At least that is the branded myth.”
“recently I’ve noticed the refrain erupting in other places also. For instance the hip sneaker brand Vans claims to be “Designed in California.””
“From the website/app Flipboard, suggested by Mike Bauerly: “Made with Love in Palo Alto, California.””
“The HP touchpad (sent in by Samuel Wade / Shawn Blanc):”
And if there weren’t a real, tangible cachet to selling the Baywatch/Hollywood/Silicon Valley dream of beautiful weather, beautiful people, beautiful product California, Apple would not have established it as a mainstay of its marketing around the world.
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yup that would be the marketing strategy I would use too. I think people underestimate the cache California has had since WWII if not before. Several of my cultural touchstones in my youth, as I said in rural Wales, were American and specifically Californian. Surf music, Grateful Dead, Haight Asbury, Kerouac, Monterey. Hollywood obviously… Some other American places including the Mississippi Delta in my own case… NYC too of course.
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Apple Marketing has some smart people working hard there. (Let’s forget about iPhone XS and XR for the time being, lol.) When you can make use of a natural advantage you do. And that means they aren’t above a little lifestyle branding. Indeed, it’s deep in Apple, for decades.
For products with a history you underscore that history. If there’s a manifesto you highlight it (The Crazy Ones, Think Different, The Computer For The Rest Of Us), when there’s a feeling about a company that people feel welcoming towards, you accentuate it… hence California.
The very first iPod came inscribed with ‘designed in California’. It’s not a throwaway line, it actually broadcasts a fundamental insight into the company’s outlook. The message is straightforward: we are innovators, we are cool, we are non-corporate, we are friendly. We are West Coast, We are California - and with that comes with all the intimations of freedom and warmth imbued in it for billions of people around the world know (or think they know) from decades of TV and movies and news.
So when you see Apple branding its macOS with California names, don’t expect necessarily to get the obvious places (Hollywood, Sunset Strip) but places that reflect natural beauty and might even require someone interested to learn a bit about a place they’d otherwise never heard of.
I agree. But unnecessary changes compete with usability, which sacrifice substance for style, these should be avoided.
I would like to hear Tim and Craig introducing…
MacOS Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
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I don’t think anyone could deny Apple’s success in “Designed in California” or that the current OS naming scheme around Californian landmarks has closer ties to the company than, for example, big cats.
However any “adjective noun” combination is open to miss-use and ridicule. This is why car manufacturers for example often use benign, well-research names often invented names which can’t be miss-interpreted in another culture or language.
This is why, in my opinion, “macOS BS” (as I’ve already seen it referred to) is a mis-step. That this is also attributed to the first edition of macOS 11 I find disappointing to say the least.