It’s just OS X

At the World Wide Developer Conference of 2008 Apple made a small but significant move in the naming of its operating systems, removing the “Mac” prefix from Mac OS X. In its promotional material at the annual developers’ gathering Apple referred to the iPhone’s OS as “OS X iPhone” and to Mac OS X 10.5 as “OS X Leopard”.

The change was pretty much evident if one took a look at pictures of WWDC banners from 2006 and 2007

WWDC 2006 bannerWWDC 2007 banner

and compared them to the new 2008 ones featuring both the Mac and iPhone operating systems

WWDC 2008 - Ground Floor and Registration

This was clearly done to unify the branding since the OS was now running on a wide gamut of devices that included not only desktops and portables but also mobiles and the Apple TV set-top.

The change was also evident in a press release in May referring to the Developers’ Conference.

Although the title “Apple Executives to Showcase Mac OS X Leopard and OS X iPhone Development Platforms at WWDC 2008 Keynote” still featured a distinction in the following text one could read

This year’s WWDC will showcase two revolutionary development platforms, the ground-breaking innovations of OS X Leopard® and OS X iPhone™, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system.

and also

WWDC 2008 will offer over 150 information-rich sessions and labs where Apple engineers will go in-depth on the innovative technologies that power OS X iPhone and OS X Leopard.

On the other hand, the footer stating that:

Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications.

had been already Mac-less at least since the 7th July of 2004.

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1 Comment

  1. Since they moved from “Mac OS X”, to “OS X” maybe in a few years they’ll move to just “X”.

    Then a few years later they’ll move to “Ehh-“. Then they’ll move to just silence.

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