In case you haven't heard, Apple have decided to rebrand OS X to macOS. This will start with the next version of the OS, macOS Sierra.

This means that while this version is OS X 10.11 El Capitan, the next is macOS 10.12 Sierra. I can understand why they've chosen this for marketing purposes, though I predict that we're going to see some confusion and convolution in future discussion about the OS.

I'm raising the point so I (we) know how best to discuss OS X/macOS in the future.

Will this involve:

  • Incorrectly: Retroactively talking about all OS X versions prior to 10.12 as macOS.
  • Stubbornly: Continuing to call it OS X regardless of what Apple has decided for continuity's sake.
  • Correctly: Calling them what they were released as (OS X up to 10.11, macOS afterwards) and hoping that the community correctly self calibrates to the change.

I'm keen to see what you all think so that future questions and answers can hopefully avoid this kind of fragmentation between the various naming schemes.

  • We'll probably see all three. Not sure how that's a problem, though, except for people with extreme OCD. :) – Pekka 웃 Jun 15 '16 at 7:57
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    Of course we should do the third thing, unless someone is speaking generically about multiple versions, then they'll just randomly pick either macOS or OS X. I can't imagine why it would possibly matter; it would be quite clear from the context that they are not talking about a specific version. If you meant to refer to a specific version, you'd include one of those number thingies. – Cody Gray Jun 15 '16 at 11:41
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    Related: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/326078/… – Cody Gray Jun 15 '16 at 11:41
  • Try to get people to stop abbreviating the Java Enterprise Edition specification as "j2ee" which it hasn't been called for a decade now - it is as persistent as a mosquito yet impossible to squash. If this is going to be as persistent, good luck to Apple to convince people to stop calling it OS X :) – Gimby Sep 21 '16 at 14:06

The Apple Support twitter account responded with

For versions before Sierra, it's OS X. From Sierra moving forward, it's macOS.

Source: https://twitter.com/AppleSupport/status/778418157933490176

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