If you’d asked me to bet on it, I would have said that OS X 10.7 Lion would be the last iteration of the Big Cat family. After all, where else is there to go? All of OS X’s releases have been named after successively bigger cats, and with Lion, Apple finally reached the biggest cat of them all.
Apparently, though, Apple envisions at least one more version of OS X before retiring the Big Cat OS once and for all. MacRumors reports that Apple is already testing OS X 10.8 internally.
Any bets on what the next version of OS X will be called? There aren’t any bigger cats, at least not without dipping a toe into cryptozoology, which would be awesome. I still favor ‘Manticore.’
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
74 responses to “OS X 10.8 Is Coming, Already In Testing At Apple!”
Liger. It’s bigger and they’re real.
Mac OS PUSS n’ BOOTS
Mac OS X Maru. It’s even cuter than before!
LOL, just like what Napoleon Dynamite had handdrawn on his sketchpad… meow
OSX Sabre
Thundercat. And there’s already a theme song.
The original Macintosh says “hello”, “Say hello to iPhone” ran the ad in 2007…..so my guess would be something like “Hello Mac OS X Kitty” for the next unveiling
Personally, I cannot wait for the end of Oh Ess Ex. Unless of course they change it to Oh Ess Ex Eye. Drives me nuts that even now, almost 10 years on, people STILL get it wrong, despite a near decade of Apple keynotes and ads. Love the OS – hate the mispronunciation.
Smilodon or saber-toothed cat comes to mind.
Thunder Cat
Liger, or Sphinx.
Catapuss, a mythical 8 headed cat. Also incorporates both “Cat” and “puss”
sabertooth!
OSX Voltron. Duh!
Maine Coon, or maybe Tabby
hi,
Actually, The Tiger is The biggest cat of them all, between 140 and 306 Kg and up to 3,3 meters long depending on The , while the Lion gets to between 140 and 215 Kg and just less than 2 meters long.
So any éther big cat will do, there is no progression at all !
Next are ligers, which are only seen in captivity and grow to be bigger. But have never been seen in the wild.
Damn ! Enough with the cats, I was hoping for a bigger change with OS XI but sphinx would be cool if they decide that’s appropriate.
Sabretooth would be nice too but unfortunately I don’t think Apple would want to call it’s new system with something thats old and dead.
In my opinion, after OS X 10.8 we should be moving on to OS 11, which would be seen as a new age for Apple, with an operational system closer to iOS – it would also mean the end of the cats.
For the last cat, we need a big, powerful cat. Now we have the king of the cats, the lion. What is a more fierce cat name than Lion?
A white lion. It’s a rare, mutated form of the lion!
We had Leopard and then a small upgrade called Snow Leopard. So I say Apple will have their next OS be an upgrade of Lion, and a great name for it would be White Lion.
OSX Sabertooth!!!
OS X 10.8 Liger
Just because the test OS is labeled 10.8 doesn’t mean the released OS will be. I still think the days of the Mac Cats are over – Apple sent a plain and understandable message by naming this release after the “king”.
My thought? Apple has a release cycle they want to stick to. Of course they realize that websites will recognize new OS’ in their analytics. “10.8” is ambiguous enough to hide details of what is sure to be a HUGE release, and keep bloggers interested (and writing articles like this) right up to the release.
That, or we’re completely off base like we were for the iPhone 5, and OSX 10.8 Chimera is a mere 2 years away.
Here comes Snow Lion!
How about Sabretooth?
It’s gotta be OS X Maru! http://twitpic.com/5szluz
pussy
OS XI… The beefed up iOS running on the next gen of ARM processors with i7 like performance in a mobile platform to truly blur all distinctions! Code name: ManBearPig.
thats what i was thinkng
I wouldn’t be shocked if they are calling this 10.8 to disguise just how big it is. Big enough that it is actually Mac OS 11. Say a combining of the under structure of iOS and Mac OS so that the devices get a common file pool for easily moving between apps, Mac OS can play iOS apps like those movie feature apps that Warners did and so on.
What’s better than cats, thundercats. Mac OS 11.0 Code name Lion-O
“I make this OS look good.”
I also think it should be Saber-tooth and then OS XI
Agreed. If they ARE releasing that big of an updated, they’d have to figure out how to hide it, and making it just another 10-dot update would be very effective. Apple is great at counter-leaks of this sort.
actually a tiger is bigger then a lion that is all
OS X 10.8 Battle Cat.
Ligers are Balla
Mac OS Thundercat
os x snow lion
They still haven’t done Mac OS X Cougar yet…that would seem to be the next most logical choice. Not Lynx, since that sounds too similar to Linux. Sabretooth would be great as well or they could even go into mythology with Mac OS X 10.9 Griffin.