Is it time for Apple to stop naming OS releases?

TidBITS Talk
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Apple has been naming its major OS releases ever since OS X. First big cats, and now scenic spots in California. And I have never, ever been able to remember the name for the release I’m running, without looking it up.

Apparently I’m running Tahoe right now, but I had to check that in “About This Mac”. Whereas “MacOS 26” is something I instantly and effortlessly remember.

Maybe it’s just me; maybe some people remember the names better. (But seriously, trying to put—for example—Mavericks, Yosemite and Sierra into release order is ridiculously difficult unless your memory is already computer-like.) I for one would not shed a tear if Apple were to drop the names and just stuck to numbers from now on. It’s so much easier.

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There is one way in which the OS versions having names is better: it makes them easier to Google.

Searching online for information about a specific numeric version of any software can be tricky, because the numbers aren’t necessarily connected to the names in the text. It’s not just a matter of searching for “macOS 26” with or without surrounding quotes; the text on the websites may reference “version 26” or “OS 26” or any other of a number of phrasings, so searching for “macOS 26” as a string literal may miss useful sites. And if you search with “macOS” and “26” as independent terms, you get all sorts of results that have the number “26” on the page in some function other than a version number.

Whereas if I search for “macOS” and “Tahoe” as independent terms, most of the results I get will be relevant to macOS 26 Tahoe. That’s because the names are not as common in the tech context as numbers are. How often is someone going to mention Tahoe as a place in text talking about the macOS? It’ll happen occasionally, sure (does Tahoe have an Apple Store?), but not often.

Numbers in specific contexts are one of the hardest things to search for, because they don’t mean anything by themselves except a raw quantity. You have to include all sorts of additional context in your search terms to ensure you get what you want. Names are easier, because they contain a certain amount of context by themselves.

(Still not the hardest thing to Google, of course. I remember the fun when it was revealed that Google had to code a specific parsing exemption to its default ignoring of “the” in order to allow searches for the band “The The” to be useful.)

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Actually, they have been using code names for unreleased products going back further than that. I think the first was Copland (a failed project intended to become Mac OS 8). The released Mac OS 8 was code-named “Tempo”.

The idea behind code names is so the company has a way to refer to the product internally before there has been any formal product announcement (where it would be given an actual name and version number). Choosing a version number during development is risky, because it might not be known at the time (will this be system 8.1, 8.5, or 9.0?) or it might never become a product (like Copland or the Pink development). Code names are also useful to minimize damage, should an employee accidentally mention the project in public, because outsiders won’t know what the word is referencing.

Mac OS X 10.2 (“Jaguar”) was the first release where Apple decided to start using their project code-names as part of the product’s branding and marketing.

iOS also has code-names (see, for example, the iOS 4 version history), but Apple never decided to use those names in product branding.

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I’ve always thought MacOS 10.9.x should have been named ‘Smilodon”. Apple really screwed up by not going to MacOS 11.0.0 after 10.9.x as the next 6 versions all violated software version numbering convention. Hopefully they will stick with using the calendar year as the Primary version number.

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I agree that using releases names makes it hard to keep them in order, though Marquelle D. McKean makes a good point about doing internet searches.

Personally, I prefer the naming scheme used on my Ubuntu systems. Version 24.04, for example is the release from April 2024. I find that very clear and simple and it works well when searching for information.

Apple’s current macOS 26, released in September 2025 should have been named, IMO, version 25.09.

Kevin

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Looking at the release history for macOS version 15 (“Sequoia”) (skipping the 15.x.1 releases, which probably should remain sequential, since they’re usually just bug-fix releases):

  • 15.0 released September 16, 2024
  • 15.1: October 28 (6 weeks)
  • 15.2: December 11 (6. weeks)
  • 15.3: January 27, 2025 (6.5 weeks)
  • 15.4: March 31 (9 weeks)
  • 15.5: May 12 (6 weeks)
  • 15.6: July 29 (11 weeks)
  • 15.7: September 15 (7 weeks)

So if we were to do this with year/month versions, we’d get: 24.9, 24.10, 24.12, 25.1, 25.3, 25.5, 25.7 and 25.9. That’s a rather irregular cadence and I think it would lead to many users (and a lot of the press) to start expecting more cadences (with no basis for that expectation) resulting in complaints when the releases come out faster or slower than expected.

Open source projects can do this because they have a policy of “we’re going to snapshot our stable branch on a fixed schedule and release whatever that may be”, and they rapidly drop support for old versions.

For example, Ubuntu puts out a release every 6 months and drops support after 9 months. For those who can’t keep up with this pace, every two years, their April release is tagged “long-term support” and is supported for five years.

But this strategy means that some releases have massive changes, while others may be mostly bug fixes and cosmetic changes. This works fine for a technically-savvy community, but I suspect would confuse others, who generally assume that changes to the major version number means major changes in the product.

This approach also doesn’t play well with companies, like Apple, that want to make big media splashes when new features are rolled out and want (for marketing purposes) to bump the major revision each time this happens.

Microsoft sort-of solved this problem by separating the marketing-name-version from the internal version. We see this looking at their releases, since Windows 10:

  • Windows 10:
    • Started out with month-stamped versions: 1507 (retroactively applied to what was NT 10.0), then 1511, 1607, 1703, 1709, 1803, 1809, 1903, 1909 and 2004
    • After that, switched to calendar-half dates: 20H2, 21H1, 21H2, 22H2
    • I assume that’s because the months didn’t always align with the actual release dates. For instance, 1607 shipped on August 2 and 1909 shipped in November. Rather than perform a last-minute change to the internal version, they chose to make the versions fuzzier.
  • Windows 11 is doing the same thing.
    • They switched the marketing version from 10 to 11 as a part of making changes that broke compatibility with old hardware, but they’ve kept the same version-number sequence from 10.
    • It appears, however, that they’ve switched to annual releases (counting the updates in between as just bug fixed and security updates): 21H2, 22H2, 23H2, 24H2, 25H2.
    • The current “Windows Insider” preview release is 26H1. I don’t know if it will keep that version when it is released.

I guess Apple could do something like that, but since they like to release major new features and compatibility-breaking changes every year, the result would probably not be much different from what they’re doing now.

In other words, given the way Apple releases software products, I think what they’re currently doing is probably the best of several bad choices.

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Well, we clearly aren’t going to agree on this, and that’s ok. I personally doubt an irregular cadence would be met by widespread confusion and community outcry, and Apple could certainly turn on their hype machine for any major update.

In any case, Apple, Microsoft, and Ubuntu are going to do whatever they are going to do and I doubt the want, care about, or will consider our opinions on the matter.

Best

Kevin

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It’s more confusing: not only was 15.7 released in September 2025, so was Tahoe 26.0 and Sonoma 14.8. Should all of them be 25.09?

I don’t mind the MacOS / OS X names - and, by the way, the release names are not usually the same as the internal code names as they were being developed. Sonoma was reportedly Sunburst, Sequoia was Glow, and Tahoe was Cheer.

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I remember the fun when it was revealed that Google had to code a specific parsing exemption to its default ignoring of “the” in order to allow searches for the band “The The” to be useful.

“The only true freedom is freedom from the heart’s desires. And the only true happiness this way lies.”

— “Dusk”, released 1993

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I like having the names along side the more boring numbers. It is one of the few bits of whimsy left at Apple. Also, it seems, many other operating systems are starting to add (or perhaps, emphasize) their names along with their numbers (Debian releases, Ubuntu releases, etc.). Having both the name and number is also useful (as suggested previously) for online searching.

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I generally don’t remember current macOS names, either, but the “About this Mac” option from the pull-down Apple menu will tell you the name and number of what your machine is running.

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David, wasn’t there a code name of “Capone” for a version of the Classic MacOS? It may have only been an in-house joke as it was aimed at Windows 95 which had been code named “Chicago”. The story was “Capone” was used because Al Capone was the “King of Chicago”!

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That wouldn’t be surprising, given the story behind another code name (plus the nature of old school Silicon Valley engineering humor):

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And of course, there are no “Butt-Heads” at Apple either. “Butt” I’m not buying Apple anything anytime soon.

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There is a list (extensive!) of code names on Wikipedia:

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I like having the names along side the more boring numbers. It is one of the few bits of whimsy left at Apple.

I guess I don’t mind the names so much, but the problem comes when people refer to OS releases only by name. If someone says they’re running “Ventura,” what the hell is that? I have to do an internet search to know what they’re talking about. Whereas “MacOS 13” at least gives me meaningful information.

(Yes, I had to do an internet search to write this response, to lookup the name for MacOS 13.)

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