Talk:macOS version history

Comment

The material here is better covered elsewhere, and there is a bunch of misleading stuff, so massive editing is called for. "humble approach" to open source? Puh-leez - that's the part of Apple I work in, and I ain't seen no humility yet. :-) Unfortunately, as an employee I'm not in a good position to write neutrally, so others will have to fix. Stan 04:29, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I agree, this page is very POV, and of limited interest in its current form. It's also not very encyclopaedic - what is APSL? Please write for intelligent but uniformed readers - if they already know, they won't be looking here to find out. GRAHAMUK 09:01, 15 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Added more detail about Rhapsody, Steve Jobs' CEO status, Mac OS X Server 1.0, and a couple other things. Phil Welch, 23 October 2003.

Merge with Mac OS X

I think this page needs to be merged into Mac OS X, since most of the history is already there. Any objections? Ctachme 22:21, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Windows has it's own history page. I think Mac OS X has a rich history and deserves detail in a separate article. Ryguillian 19:48, 12 May 2005 (CST)

ARS links....

I think it's hard to argue that we need 11 links to seperate ARS Technica articles. One link to their site maybe, and let them handle the internal linking for people who are really interested, but 11 links is too much like link spam, IMO Wikibofh 13:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I think a single link to their site (rather than to actual information about the topic) would be pointless. Someone was going through Wikipedia taking out links and even mentions of Ars Technica, which was obvious vandalism, which is why I put them all back. If 11 is too many, perhaps culling the list to the most significant articles would be better? Tverbeek 14:36, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

• I agree with simply culling the list and would support that. I talked with the user doing the full ARS removal and he agreed to stop, but cited this page as the worst offender, which I agreed with. He did have a few pages that the ARS links were gratuitous and I clean a few of them up. I think we're at a good place if we can just agree on a reasonable number here. For a full discussion see User_talk:65.162.78.194. Wikibofh 15:35, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

When someone comes up with links that provide as much information about the history of Mac OS X (which is coincidentally what this page is titled), then I will fully support cutting some Ars links. Until that time, and considering that most tech reviews these days are little more than re-printed press releases with fresh bylines, I respectfully suggest that these links remain. AlistairMcMillan 01:19, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Agree with you there - Ars provides some of the best in-depth information out there, and doesn't have an agenda or bias either. They should stay. Graham 02:58, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

• I would argue that a better source for in-depth discussion without an agenda or a bias would be the wikipedia.  :) I don't also don't think that we need a link to every subversion of the software, as well as several of the betas. Why don't we simply make it a plan to expand this article and slowly diminsh those links? Wikibofh 17:01, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry if I sound snarky, but how about make it a plan to not be influenced by anonymous editors who (1) border on vandalism and (2) for all we know run sites that compete with the ones whose links they are deleting? AlistairMcMillan 16:42, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

The need to specifically refer to multiple different articles is inherent within the need to document at all. A reader should not have to rummage through a large data base or an entire book to find a singe bit of information that was being referenced. The casual reader should have all essential information in the article. The person who is using the article as a portal to the subject should have a road map of references available.

What is the objective you perceive for Wikipedia articles? Children's book levels of research, documentation and exposition? Or should the article provide essentially information while containing enough information via documentation so as to provide a serious researcher with the leads to what they might need to pursue?

p.s. have operated every version f OSX from Kodiak on. My first experience troubleshooting a Mac goes back to System 3.1 (the owner had a mismatched System & Finder installed). I suspect this article might often be accessed by persons wanting to know what System options are available for an older machine, for either the newest possible system or for restoration to the machine's original configuration. Information which the article does not provide.

Mark Lincoln (talk) 14:21, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

@Mark Lincoln: FYI, you just replied to an eleven year old thread about what is now a totally different article. I'd say these comments need to be archived. — Smuckola(talk) 15:53, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

naming

I used to have a mailing list post from 1999 or so where someone suggested "Mac OS X" as a name for what was then unofficially being called 'Millennium' and also suggested Apple open source the non-graphical parts of the OS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.125.110.223 (talk) 16:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

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Mac OS X's file system

Mac OS X uses the same HFS+ file system as Mac OS 9, like it says here. So I think that saying that it has a different file system (as the article says) is wrong. It organizes things in a more UNIX-y way, but it uses HFS+ to this day.

Fmfreier (talk) 05:03, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I made this change because you are absolutely right, HFS+ was the filesystem on OS 9 and has been the filesystem on OS X from the beginning. Jsnell (talk) 01:36, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I think the problem is that, in some places, including Wikipedia articles, some people use "file system" to refer to the directory layout (the "organizes things in a more UNIX-y way" stuff) rather than to the on-disk data structures used. Unix filesystem, for example, spends more space discussing the directory layout than the on-disk file system (which is probably just as well, as there's no one on-disk layout that all Unix-like systems, or even all AT&T Unix systems, used).

I'm not sure what the right way is to mention the directory layout being (not surprisingly) more Unixy in OS X than in OS 9 and predecessors, assuming it's worth noting. Guy Harris (talk) 01:59, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, there *was* no directory layout other than the System folder pre-X. Around the OS8 time Apple included Applications and Documents folders at the root level but apps could be installed anywhere. I'm sure everyone knows someone that installed everything to the desktop.

Redirect from Eric Gould Bear

Article Eric Gould Bear has been redirected here because his company has patents that, they claimed, would cover several summarizing features of OS X (see article history and last version). I'm adding this note per WP:PRESERVE AND WP:BLAR. Diego (talk) 18:55, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

OS X is certified UNIX as of Leopard

This article says that OS X is UNIX-like. According to OpenBrand, OS X is certified UNIX 2003, beginning with the Intel version of OS X 10.5 Leopard on October 26, 2007.

I do not understand why the name of the operating system is in quotation marks. Why OS X "Leopard" but not Microsoft "Windows"? Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks are not code names. They are the official marketing names of the operating systems.

One must disabuse oneself of this quirk. It is not proper to add quote marks or other punctuation in a way that edits the trademark (or service mark) or implies that the name is not a trademark (or service mark). — Preceding unsigned comment added by KenWC (talk • contribs) 16:45, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

With regards to the first comment, I've added a paragraph noting that Leopard, Snow Leopard, and Mountain Lion are certified UNIX(R), giving the Open Group Register of Open Branded Products pages for them as citations. The OS is still "Unix-like" - all UNIX(R) systems are ipso facto "Unix-like"; you can't get much more "Unix-like" than being a certified UNIX(R) - so I left in the sentence describing it as "Unix-like".

With regards to the second comment, I removed quotations from locations where they don't belong. They do belong in the first paragraph of the "Releases" section, because the words are used to refer to themselves, not to the releases, and arguably belong in the section titles, because they're separate items from the version numbers. Guy Harris (talk) 17:49, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Because there is an exact certification of what Unix is and isn't, "Unix-like" basically means that it's not Unix but it's similar. That's how wikipedia's categorization system is used, too. To be more inclusive to a genre, one would say "Unix and Unix-like systems". — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 19:06, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

If that's true, you might want to edit Unix-like so that it no longer says

A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification.

as that seems to imply that "Unix-like" includes UNIX(R) ("not necessarily conforming", not "not conforming"). Guy Harris (talk) 20:02, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Reversion of updates

For reasons that I cannot understand, User:Smuckola keeps undoing my updates to this article. In the versions he favors, the "Releases" section lists all of the "big cat" code names, then stops when it gets to the "California" names. I've tried adding these, which he reverts, disparaging it as "recentism" (which I think misses the point of that issue... just because something is recent doesn't make it bad to document). One might reasonably argue instead that the list is redundant and unnecessary, but if the list exists it should be complete rather than petering out as if only the older releases really matter. If "Puma" and "Tiger" and "Snow Leopard" and the rest of the cats are worth mentioning, so are "Yosemite" and "El Capitan". -01:47, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I've reverted Smuckola's latest deletion of information about a recent release, because his justification for it was nonsensical. We're supposed to be balanced, and that means treating all OS X upgrades more or less equally, not giving extra attention to some just because they're older, and short shrift to newer ones. So I've also trimmed down the three subsections under "Releases" that actually did have excessive details (better left to the main articles about them). Now each point-release has one short paragraph describing its most noteworthy changes: no more, no less. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 17:02, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

History doesn't end with 10.0

The text of the article as it is now is really the prehistory of OS X, talking about the development of the OS up to the point where it was released to the public, then lapsing into a series of release notes for the point-releases. Shouldn't the material from OS_X#History be incorporated here instead, talking about how it developed in Apple's software strategy, first as the software of the revitalized Mac, then as a companion to iOS... the influence of Forstall, then of Ive (neither of whom are even mentioned)...? -Jason A. Quest (talk) 17:19, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

"See also" to Microsoft's Windows 10

@Guy Harris: This article is basically a version history and just because it doesn't use the version history template from other articles doesn't make it less so, as both Windows 10 and O.S. X are desktop operating systems they are related.

Sincerely, --86.81.201.94 (talk) 20:40, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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External links modified

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A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Finder icon macOS Yosemite.png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 10:39, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

TLS support

It would be handy to know when TLS support was added and removed in various releases. The version history pages for things like iOS/Firefox/Chrome/Android/etc have this and it's nice. 2602:61:715D:4000:0:0:0:4 (talk) 18:21, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Internal demo of OSX 10.0 by Jobs at Macworld 2000

Shouldn't a mention be made of the demo Jobs showed at Macworld 2000? It was (I believe) an internal demo predecessor to 10.0. E.g. the dock was different. http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/os_x_aqua.jpg 2003:E1:BF28:E538:308E:C175:2ADB:293 (talk) 23:52, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:IOS version history which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 17:48, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Not any more, there isn't - "The result of the move request was: pages not moved." Guy Harris (talk) 23:33, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Split Development section and expand

I believe the development section should be split, and expanded based on :

• Singh, Amit (2005). "A History of Apple's Operating Systems" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 5, 2006. Retrieved April 24, 2006.

That material was posted on the author's site for free, as a supplemental chapter to a Pearson-published book he wrote ("Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach"). Given his expertise, I believe it's perfectly usable as a source. It goes deep in the history of Apple's operating systems, and efforts to create Mac OS X. And I am sure other sources can be found too.

It would be nice to have an article tying that all together: it could include WP:SUMMARY sections of the main articles on these efforts (Taligent, Copland, etc, which can be expanded based on the supplemental above), and have more comprehensive detail for parts that don't have a main articles.

The split article could be linked at MacOS#Development as {{main}} (and summarized), and Mac_(computer)#1997–2011:_Steve_Jobs_era as {{see also}}. DFlhb (talk) 17:06, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

I'll try to expand the "Development" section here first; and then we'll see. DFlhb (talk) 17:11, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Issue with the Latest Release for macOS Ventura

On this page and the page macOS Ventura, the table showing the release history says that the latest release was version 13.6.3, which, according to Apple's "What's new in the updates for macOS Ventura" page, does not exist. The edit that looks like changed the table on the 13.6.3 update was made by user 132.205.231.200 at "this link". Could someone take a look at this? Thanks. Myrealnamm (talk) 22:36, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

version 13.6.3, which, according to Apple's "What's new in the updates for macOS Ventura" page, does not exist. By which you presumably mean "...was not mentioned in that page, for some unknown reason", given that, according to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT214038, 13.6.3 most definitely does exist. Guy Harris (talk) 22:13, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Guy Harris, thank you for your reply. I understand now. Good thing I asked someone instead of removing that....

Myrealnamm (talk) 14:48, 1 January 2024 (UTC)