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Comment by helthanatos | Hacker News Reader

I always preferred OS X over any of the similar names... I hate that they changed it back to MacOS

I develop Mac software and support my software via email. The problem I always had with "OS X" is that users who don't know what an "OS" is, didn't seem to parse "OS X" at all (they would reply back as though it didn't appear in the sentence). They certainly didn't associate it with their Mac – apparently thinking it was just some weird sigil that the geek in the internet computer machine had included for no reason. I always had to say "Mac OS X Lion" (or whatever the big cat name of the year was) to get any level of understanding.

"macOS", for all its initial lowercase goofiness is at least understood by most users.

OS X has always suffered from all-to-common misreading, however. They traded that for a likely-to-be all-too-common miscapitalization/misspacing.

I always thought it was pretty clear to say "os ecks" myself, but I've heard internally / correctly people say "oh es ten". It's hard to break the habit after 5+ years though.

Last vestiges of Roman enumeration :). Saw an article the other day that said "Part I of V". I shook my head.

Why? "Part I of V" is crystal-clear. It's the nineth part of a 22-part series, preceded by "Part H" and succeeded by "Part J". :)

This is such a good example of the difference between Strongly typed and Stringly typed.

It was never really meant to be "OS 10", despite what the 'correct way' to say it was. Pure marketing.

If it was really meant to be "OS 10", then they wouldn't have versions like "OS X 10.6", they'd just have "OS X.6" or "OS X.VI". How many people do you hear saying "OS ten ten point six"?

>The current version of Mac OS is Mac OS X (pronounced "Mac O-S ten").

https://support.apple.com/kb/TA22541?locale=en_US

I think he meant that it was not supposed to be "Mac Oh Es Ten Ten Nine Two", but rather "Mac Oh Es Ten Nine Two" when referring to Mac OS X 10.9.2. Do you think people said "Mac Oh Es Nine Nine One", or "Mac Oh Es Nine One" for Mac OS 9.1?

I think you write (and say as /ten/) "X" as the major version if you're also using the non-numeric minor version: "Mac OS X Snow Leopard"; but you omit it when using the numeric minor version so as to also use the Arabic major version: "Mac OS 10.6". You say /ten/ either way and never twice.

People seem to quite commonly write "Mac OS X 10.6", which duplicates the 10. News articles and Wikipedia included. I don't remember what the machines themselves reported, though. I don't have anything pre-Sierra anymore.

I'm pretty sure it was meant to be OS 10 the whole time. It succeeded OS 9.

I've heard employees try to avoid using the dot notation when they speak in favor of just saying the codename.

One issue with the "OS X" name was that you have to use a non-breaking space (alt+space) between OS and X to prevent awkward line breaks in the middle of the brand, which in turn made it harder to search for "OS X" in dumb text editors.

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