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Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

I went to the wikipedia page, which is kinda the point. No other OS requires you too look it up. Even WatchOS and iOS directly use version numbers.

Saying it's due to NextStep integration sounds like a strange defense of this naming strategy (if that was your intention). They have version numbers, but they decide to use the "code name" as a product name.

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> No other OS requires you too look it up.

- Windows 3.1

- Windows 95

- Windows 98

- Windows 98 Second Edition

- Windows 2000

- Windows Me

- Windows XP

- Windows Vista

- Windows 7

- Windows 8

- Windows 10 1507

- Windows 10 2004

- Windows 10 21H2

- Windows 10 22H2

- Windows 11 21H2

- Windows 11 22H2

Compare to

- Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah)

- Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma)

- Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar)

- Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)

- Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

- Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

- Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

- Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)

- Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)

- Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)

- Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite)

- Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan)

- macOS 10.12 (Sierra)

- macOS 10.13 (High Sierra)

- macOS 10.14 (Mojave)

- macOS 10.15 (Catalina)

- macOS 11 (Big Sur)

- macOS 12 (Monterey)

- macOS 13 (Ventura)

- macOS 14 (Sonoma)

Also,

  Android 1.0
  Android 1.1
  Android Cupcake
  Android Donut
  Android Eclair
  Android Froyo
  Android Gingerbread
  Android Honeycomb
  Android Ice Cream Sandwich
  Android Jelly Bean
  Android KitKat
  Android Lollipop
  Android Marshmallow
  Android Nougat
  Android Oreo
  Android Pie
  Android 10
  Android 11
  Android 12
  Android 12L
  Android 13
  Android 14
  Android 15

Notice how Android clearly was alphabetical, until they realised people weren't getting that (or got sick of coming up with names of sugary foods), and went back to the number system.

Mac has not gone with alphabetical, but seemingly random names related to cats or places in California.

Various projects do the Alphabetical thing. If you're going to have names, it's a great way to do it. OpenStack, Ceph & Ubuntu all do that.

However it's still a challenge. I work with all of those daily and I often think about the project over-all and it's features or bugs in terms of the alphabetical name, but there is also a numerical name and I have to lookup and translate from it - when looking at diagnostic output from customer installs, or git tags, etc. I keep some subset of the translations in my head but not all them :)

Just think of how fast you'll be with a1z26 ciphers!

I could have sworn the dessert names were code names and they did numbered releases too the entire time but they did drop the 1.x numbering for just whole versions.

MacOS versions have a number, which counts up, the same as iOS and WatchOS. "Sonoma" is a cutesy name for "MacOS 14", the same way that "Jammy Jellyfish" is the cutesy name for Ubuntu 22.04.

The version number is shown in the About This Mac page, which is the top menu item in the Apple menu at all times.

At least Ubuntu's names are alphabetical.

Off the top of my head I couldn't tell which was later out of Big Sur, Ventura, Monterey ...

I constantly get Mojave and Monterey mixed up.

And I'm completely lost with Debian releases.

As mentioned in my post the NextSTEP integration - OSX - was a major branding effort for Apple. It was the reason for Job's return to Apple and was seen as the savior of the company. I think Apple wanted something to hang their hats on that lived for many years.

It's weird and clunky, but makes sense in the history of the company as all previous OSes were numbered. Yes, they probably should have moved off that convention earlier, probably by the time the Intel integration had happened at the very least.

> No other OS requires you too look it up.

Debian and Ubuntu frequently refer to releases by codename rather than number

Right, how am I supposed to know "buster" is newer than "stretch"? (wait, it is, right?)... I've never understood this approach.

Have you been following Windows 10/11 versions? macOS’ naming scheme is a breeze in comparison.

How do you figure? Windows had 7, 8, skipped 9, 10, 11, and now 12 is coming.

Windows thought they'd never do a major update again, and tried to hold on to the 10 label, but then realized that wouldn't work. So 11 is a bit of a branding stumble, but we know, it came after 10.

You are conveniently ignoring any Windows release before 7.

But Windows never used a separate name for minor versions, so there are only 6 exceptions (and hopefully no more). And a half of them are year numbers.

You’re ignoring all yearly updates to Windows 10 and 11, most of them with news features enough that would be a major version if they were on macOS.

I mean[1]:

>As announced in July, the Windows 11 2023 Update (version 23H2) will be released in the fourth quarter of 2023. This new update will have the same servicing branch and code base as Windows 11, version 22H2 and will be cumulative with all the newly announced features. For devices on version 22H2, the 2023 Update will be delivered via a small enablement package (eKB)7. This continues the annual feature update cadence, with new feature updates released in the second half of the calendar year. This new version resets the 24 months of support for Home and Pro editions and 36 months of support for Enterprise and Education editions.

[1] https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/09/26/how-t...

See also Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows Vista

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