How long until macOS 12?

I wanted to know, how long do you guys think it’ll be until MacOS 12 is a thing? Could it be another 20 years, or 1 year?

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I think they’ll go back to incrementing the version number by .1 each release for another decade or so.

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I think it makes sense for all the OSes to eventually be on the same version number. I was wondering if they will do away with the names for macOS, either rush a couple of releases in or skip them, and be on par with the version numbers for iOS, iPadOS and tvOS. That still leaves watchOS out though as it is quite far behind on the numbers front :man_shrugging:

I think it’s possible (I’m just guessing) that Apple will align the version numbers for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. So next year’s release could potentially be macOS 15.

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I think if Apple was going to align the version numbers they would have done it now (going to 14 rather than 11).

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I think if Apple was going to align the version numbers they would have done it now (going to 14 rather than 11).

Calling it macOS 14 “Big Sur” would have made sense in many ways…though, maybe Apple isn’t quite ready to draw such a clear parallel. In any case, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming years.

It probably depends mainly on Marketing concerns.

Personally, I think Mac will increasingly be marketed as the Convergence platform: Anything you can run on iOS, iPad OS, (Watch OS?), (TV OS?) will run on Mac.

So, how that drive proceeds will drive naming and function.

Now, whether iPad and Mac will converge is another matter.

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I do find it interesting that they changed the number apparently later in the game. Lots of “10.16” strings in the OS.

…also that they stayed on the California naming scheme after changing the number.

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That happens a lot in Product Development. And attests to how many places the product name / number etc are encoded in the build.

And, believe me, Marketing decisions can go right to the wire. (As can “oh dear, we can’t ship/announce this as it’s dead-on-arrival” considerations.)

We should be (slightly) grateful there’s limited printing of things nowadays. Pulping documents and manuals was such a sad sight.

(Edit was just restoring “pulping” which had got autocorrupted :slight_smile: to “pulling”.)