What’s In A Name? The End Of Mac OS X

HardMac’s Joe notes that “Mac OS X” has officially lost its “Mac” and is now simply called “OS X”, marking what he suggests is the end of the Macintosh Operating System.

I think that’s overstating the case a bit. the Apple personal computer operating system has undergone name changes previously, having been originally known as “system” up to system 7.5, and only becoming the Mac OS with the release of Mac OS 7.6 in the late ’90s, a change that was initiated subsequent to Steve Jobs return to Apple in 1997. The Mac OS designation has thus been around for 14 years and has been applied to more than10 major versions of the OS if revisions like Mac OS 8.5, 8.6, 9.1 and 9.2 are included in the tally.

In any event with the Macintosh, still representing some 30% of Apple’s revenues is not going away anytime soon, regardless of what its operating system is called, although it seems inevitable that the Mac PC system will be incorporating more and more nuances from Apple’s mobile iOS starting with the imminent version 10.7 Lion and going forward.

However, Joe speculates that the Macintosh name itself for the hardware could be on the bubble, noting that it’s now a 27 year old brand, and from a purely marketing point of view, changing the name of Apple’s computer line-up combined with the huge success of iOS could facilitate Apple becoming the biggest computer manufacturer in the world.

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