is it "Oh Ess Ex" or "Oh Ess Ten"?
 

I know that Apple insist that it's OS TEN - following on the heels of OS8 and OS9 you can kinda see the pattern...... :D

But oh so many people are calling it "oh ess ex" - even longterm Mac users - that I thought I'd see what you lot think. For years I've been patiently & gently correcting people. But I found myself recommending this site to a friend and called it "Mac Oh Ess Ex Hints dot com". AAaaaAAaaargh.

What do you call yours?

When I'm talking about the OS, it's O S ten. But if I referred to this site as "Mac O S ten hints dot com" then I think that would imply that the address is macos10hints.com -- obviously incorrect. So I read it as X when mentioning websites.

Add to that the fact that the first few months I knew about OS X was through articles I read online -- and none of them mentioned the fact that X was Ten. So I started off by reading it as OS X (thinking it was similar to the Unix XWindows) so it formed a habit that I still have to consciously think about correcting.

It's a visual pun of sorts, actually referencing both "ten" and "x as in X-Window". When you're saying it out loud you have to pick one, of course, and Apple says "ten" but I wouldn't bother correcting anyone who says "oh ess ex".

Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto!
Let's call the whole thing off! :D

Sampson Simpson! I stick by ma story, I come from Jamaica!

Stop The Debate
 

It has been made clear that the X in OS X is the roman numeral for 10. Take kings —
We don't say Allen ix... we say Allen the Ninth.

Same with OSs It's not OS x, it's OS TEN!

Point proven.

Hopefully the Pronunciation Police won't show up at my house..

When OS XI arrives, I have an avenue for those who currently permit or are attached to the pronunciation 'Oh-Es-Ex":

I propose that OS XI be pronounced "Oh Sexy".

I have no doubt that it will live up to that.

One feature I really appreciate from Jaguar and Panther is the inclusion of a Ten-Windowing system. (Isn't that how you pronounce X-Windows?).

I just got up after 5 hours of sleep and everything is kind of funny to me now, but I don't see any need to get upset about any of this. It seems that everyone has agreed that it is officially 'Oh-Es-Ten', but that some might have an attachment to 'Oh-Es-Ex'.

Kind of off topic here, but was there ever an OS 2, OS 3, OS 4, or OS 5?

Just for the record, I often say "Mac OS 10" or "OS Exx". Rarely as 'A/UX 10.0' or 'Rhapsody Reloaded.'

But this site shouldn't be referred to as 'MacOS10Hints', or the URL can be a little confusing. ;)

The older 'classic' operating systems were named System (x) until Mac OS 7.6 officially changed from the older System (x) to Mac OS (x)

Trivia: Was there ever a released System 4.x ?

I'm aware of that...but I use the appropriate terminologyl. Was there a System 2, a System 3, a System 4, or a System 5? I'm aware of System 6 and System 7, but was not around computers (Macintosh or not) at all before that.

PS: I just remembered the name of a site that will probably have the answers to these questions. It makes for some fun reading anyway.

I have in front of me, an Apple-supplied system recovery CD, with a large variety of installers. Includes System 1.0, 2.0.1, 5.0, 5.1, and 3 different System 6 versions. I see System 3.x listed in some older systems as a shipping system, but have never come across any actual reference to System 4. One of the Apple history sites will surely have that info.

I say OS Ex to refer to the OS, but 10.3.5 for the current version. Does that help? :D

I think they used X instead of 10.0 to indicate that it was a radically new OS. That the X could also be interpreted as 10 indicated that it was the OS that succeeded OS 9.

Personally, I wish they had called it OS X, v. 1.0, to emphasize the newness of it, allowing the relation to OS 9 to be minimized. Some of you may recall the bickering that went on in Mac Forums all over the net concerning the new work flow and features missing from OS 9. I think the 10 connection contributed to expectations that it would be 9 +, which indeed it was, in some ways, but not so in others.

It wasn't until System 6 appeared that there was a unified numbering system to the releases. Otherwise you had things like System 4.2/Finder 6.0/LaserWriter 5.0/MultiFinder 1.0d, and various other configuration management pleasantries. There never was a System 5.x, although there was a Finder 5.x.

PS - I found a nice little history of the early Macintosh system software as Appendix A of the Macintosh System Software User's Guide, Version 6.0. Knew there was a reason to save this stuff. :cool:

Mac OS XTREME!!

Now that I'm more awake (my other post was at 2 in the morning), I'm realizing that the problem is how the letters X and i are becoming really, really, overused lately.
The X is usually just thrown in for effect, often meaning (on some level) xtreme (as yellow said) or expirience (as in WinXP).

Apple used it as a roman numeral, which is rarely done nowadays. That's the problem. It was a very simple mistake, but very problematic.

I'm just scared of XI.
-----
Also, to finally answer the trivia directly: there was a System 4, on the Mac SE and Mac II. It introduced multiple monitors, multiple programs running at once, and an About This Mac-like window showing memory usage of programs.
There was no System 5, though.

Yep. I used it. System 4.0 was the first to directly support hard disks (older systems did not distinguish between shutdown and reboot. If you were booted from a floppy, it would eject the floppy and display the image of disk-icon-with-question-mark, and if you reinserted the floppy it would boot again, or you could switch the machine off. If you had a bootable hard disk, of course, it could not eject the hard disk so shutting down meant rebooting unless you switched off the computer at the instant of hearing the boot-chime ding. System 4 gave us the "You may now power down your computer safely" dialog so you could switch off the power at your leisure.) And then System 4.1 replaced the old single-panel non-expandable Control Panel with the modular one that supported third-party control panel devices — cdevs — that could have panes of their own).

The System version Apple skipped was System 5.

Now, that's only 3/4 true, because somewhere between the era of System 3 and System 6 they started releasing the System and the Finder and the other attendant files — which didn't have a unified numbering scheme on a per-file basis, so the version number for the System could be quite different from the version number for the Finder — were released as "System Tools ___", and at least the latter editions of System 4 were bundled with Finder and other stuff under the combined name of "System Tools 5".

But most of us ignored all that and continued to refer to the system we were using by the version number of the System file itself, and for that it went from System 4.1 (possibly a briefly-in-use 4.2) to System 6, and there was never a system file calling itself System 5.x

::remembers the 512Ke Macs in the Mac lab::

They used the roman numeral 'X' to indicate that it was a radically new OS, but from the start (May 20, 1998 for those outside Apple) it was pronounced "Mac OS 10". Every speaker on the subject at WWDC '98 (where Apple announced it) said "Mac OS 10". To me that left no room for saying that they (Apple) wanted it referred to as "Mac OS Ex".

Further, looking at the dates, Mac OS X predates Mac OS 9. Infact the big question at the time was why Apple was skipping Mac OS 9. Even Mac OS X Server (the renamed Rhapsody 5.3) was released to the public long before Mac OS 9.

Yeah, I remember that... and I found it fun how many people (specially Mac enthusiasts) where caught completely by surprise when Mac OS X was released. From May 1998 to September 2000 (for the Public Beta, March 2001 for 10.0) should have been enough time to learn about what was coming... at least the name.

I, personally did feel it was any more ready than most people when released. I continued to use Mac OS 8.6, Mac OS 9.x and Rhapsody 5.6 (Mac OS X Server 1.2) as my daily operating systems until the day of the Mac OS X v10.2 release. After that, 10.2 complete removed the need for 8.6/9.2 and significantly displaced Rhapsody in my usage.

But, yes, many of us who were following Mac OS X development thought that Mac OS X's first release should have been 1.0 (just like Mac OS X Server started at 1.0). Further, many of us were sure that the first release of Mac OS X Server based on Darwin was going to be called Mac OS X Server 2.0 (following the 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.2 and 1.2v3 releases). Instead they called it Mac OS X Server 10.0.3 (to coincide with the current version of Mac OS X that it was based on).

I think the subject of the version numbering is quite interesting though. NeXT called their operating system NEXTSTEP (with a number of different capitalization schemes) from 0.8 to 3.3. When they renamed the OS to OPENSTEP (not to be confused with the OpenStep application environment) they continued to use the same numbering starting with 4.0 (I have a friend with a copy of the beta which was still called NEXTSTEP 4.0). When Apple bought NeXT, they renamed it again (along with quite a few other changes) to Rhapsody but followed along with the numbering starting at 5.0. Apple didn't even mean to apply a version number to Mac OS X Server (which thinks itself to be Rhapsody 5.3) because they thought it would be quickly replace with a version using the real (Darwin based) Mac OS X.

This gives us these numbers for the NeXT/Apple OS:

• NeXTstep 0.8
  NeXTstep 1.0
  NeXTSTEP 2.0
  NeXTSTEP 2.1
  NEXTSTEP 3.0
  NEXTSTEP 3.1
  NEXTSTEP 3.2
  NEXTSTEP 3.3
  OPENSTEP 4.0
  OPENSTEP 4.1
  OPENSTEP 4.2
  Rhapsody Developer Release (Rhapsody 5.0)
  Rhapsody Developer Release 2 (Rhapsody 5.1)
  Rhapsody Premier (Rhapsody 5.2- never released)
  Mac OS X Server 1.0 (Rhapsody 5.3)
  Mac OS X Server 1.0.1 (Rhapsody 5.4)
  Mac OS X Server 1.0.2 (Rhapsody 5.5)
  Mac OS X Server 1.2 (Rhapsody 5.6)
  Mac OS X Server 1.2 v.3 (Rhapsody 5.6 also)

After the release of Rhapsody 5.1 Apple started work on Mac OS X. The versions for Mac OS X are as follows:

• Mac OS X Developer Preview
  Mac OS X Developer Preview 2
  Mac OS X Developer Preview 2.6 (aqua demo)
  Mac OS X Developer Preview 3
  Mac OS X Developer Preview 4
  Mac OS X Public Beta
  Mac OS X v. 10.0 (10.0.0-10.0.4)
  Mac OS X v. 10.1 (10.1.0-10.1.5)
  Mac OS X v. 10.2 (10.2.0-10.2.8)
  Mac OS X v. 10.3 (10.3.0-10.3.5)

And lets not forget Darwin in all this. When Apple started Mac OS X they felt a need to relieve themselves of some undue licensing restrictions that had been following the NeXT/Apple OS from it's conception in the late 1980s. The new foundation was named Darwin. Here are the releases (that correspond to Mac OS X releases):

• Mac OS 10.0 (Mac OS X Developer Preview)
  Mac OS 10.0 (Mac OS X Developer Preview 2)
  Darwin 1.0 (Mac OS X Developer Preview 3)
  Darwin 1.1 (Mac OS X Developer Preview 4)
  Darwin 1.2.1 (Mac OS X Public Beta)
  Darwin 1.3.1 (Mac OS X v. 10.0)
  Darwin 1.4.1 (Mac OS X v. 10.1)
  Darwin 5.1-5.5 (Mac OS X v. 10.1.1-10.1.5)
  Darwin 6.0-6.8 (Mac OS X v. 10.2.0-10.2.8)
  Darwin 7.0-7.5 (Mac OS X v. 10.3.0-10.3.5)*

Well, what I have in the way of releases from Apple from System 0.97 to System 7.0 is the following:

• System 0.97
  System 1.0, Finder 1.0
  System 1.1, Finder 1.1
  System 2.0, Finder 1.1
  System 2.0, Finder 4.1
  System 3.0, Finder 5.1
  System 3.1.1, Finder 5.2
  System 3.2, Finder 5.3
  System 3.3, Finder 5.4
  System 4.0, Finder 5.4
  System 4.1, Finder 5.5
  System 5.0
  System 5.1
  System 6.0, Finder 6.1
  System 6.0.2
  System 6.0.3
  System 6.0.4
  System 6.0.5
  System 6.0.8
  System 7.0

I haven't tried installing what is labeled as System 5.0 and System 5.1, but they are sitting on my disk on Apple System Software. As the oldest system I have is a Macintosh IIcx, I can only go back as far as System 6.0.5.


Back on subject, I don't really care if people want to call Mac OS X "Mac OS Ex", that is up to them. And if some of you feeling the need to call X Windows "10 Windows", well, that is a little weird, but to each their own. But if I hear anyone call me Racer10 I'm going to hurt someone. :mad:


*for some reason 10.3.1 displays Darwin 7.0 when it should have been 7.1

I was just kidding about the "10 Windows" for "X Windows", Racer Ex.

OK, I see these on my 'Phil and Dave's Excellent CD' developer collection of early OS's. I think I still have a working Mac Plus that would support these, if I can find the 800k floppies to create a System disk.

Is there any correlation between who calls you Racer Ten and the person you're going to hurt?

I'm just imagining you talking with a few people -- one of them calls you Racer Ten, and you turn and smack an innocent bystander.

:D

Well, there is the fact that the only person I'll actually see who might call me Racer 10 (so I can hear it) is Craig... tomorrow night... so we'll see.

:rolleyes:

Of course I was going to try to bum a ride off him to get home, so that'll probably play a large part in what happens. ;)

while i was on hold waiting thru the jibba-jabba CDW pipes in your ear, i distinctly heard the canned woman say 'mac os-sex'. it struck me as odd, from someone who is authorized to sell the stuff.

prolly hasnt changed in a couple of weeks. 800-all-macs

The canned voice people probably don't know anything... they're just hired.
Still, next time you call you should ask them to get it redone.

A lot of companies that have been creating Mac software for a long time still refer to them as MACs. Which seriously rubs me the wrong way. WTF is that an acronym for?

lol...lot's of stuff apparently: http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-quer...=MAC&Find=Find

I didn't mean literally, of course. When I think MAC, I think ethernet hardware address. But please don't get me started on the whole MAC vs. Mac debate.

That site is wrong, BTW, right off the bat.

That is NOT an acronym. BTW is an acronym. NASA is an acronym. FBI is an acronym. LAPOS is an acronym.

"Mac" is an abbreviation. :)

is it "Oh Ess Ex" or "Oh Ess Ten"
 

Since the X in OS X is a Roman numeral, I'd go with "OS decimus ten point five".

Few.. resurrecting a thread that is almost 4 years old! :)

This thread is weird to me, because I've never actually seen this debated anywhere. Isn't OSX pretty much just called "oh ess ex" these days? Even by Apple?

I like it when people say "Oh Ess Ex" fast and it sounds like "Oh Es Sex". They are sexy computers though:rolleyes:.. Just look at that stainless steel and those delicious icons..
Did I say that out-loud? :D

If you want curves nothing beats the old clamshell eh?

I loved those things.. Wonder why they stopped making them:eek:..

And speaking of sexy, check out this macbook:rolleyes:..

Always remember, Felix, to point out if links are work safe. It took me a couple minutes, because I was busy checking out the 15" MBP, but I eventually noticed that there was a woman behind it, and the MBP was the only thing she was wearing... ;)

Too funny.
And Felix, great link.

For a minute there, I was completely baffled.. After revisiting the link and inspecting the photo in detail, I noticed that you guys were right.. there was a naked lady behind the macbook :D It almost ruined the picture
I'll try be more careful next time I post links like that on here:rolleyes:

I downloaded the photo, and set it up as the desktop picture in my son's login on the mbp we all share. I'm hoping to be around when he logs in so I can see his reaction.

Now, why doesn't my dad do that? :D

Of course I'd also like to be around to see his reaction after I remove it!

thats cruel... (and what if your wife sees it?!) then again, he's always got safari private browsing *cough* ;)

Felix what type of sites do you look at to get that sort of stuff.... unless that was a picture of someone you knew...

Lol, thats just mean :P

Safari private browsing? I wonder what's that for:rolleyes:.. I've never used it in my life ;)
(I think private browsing feature tells us something about the guys at apple..xD)

And the picture was from my good friend google :D.. I think I entered something like "hot mac girl".. and I was obviously looking for a hot picture of a female mac:p..

oh bit off topic but felix, just added you as a friend on yt..

i bet you use that feature 3-10 times a day.... but i think i ruined johns, sons life...

and errr dude, there are a lot better things you could google than hot mac girl, you dont need to be a nerd 24/7

Lol, I only googled that because it was related to what I had previously posted on this threat :P
Of course I know there are better things to look at for on the internet. I just use yahoo for that. Way more image and video results, at a higher quality..
Yea.. and I use that for my school projects all the time:rolleyes:;)

hmmm, yahoo, never thought of that.... my work will be so much easier now...

For the record, there is a practical use for "Private Browsing". It's there for when you are on someone else's computer doing financial stuff. That way they can't go into their cache and pull out your data. Granted, I don't think that's what people actually use it for...but that's the original intent.

O.O lies..

Yea.. I'm sure..
Just admit that the guys at Apple are dirty little boys just like the rest of us :D

Not dirty enough.... still leaves cookies in Private Browsing mode.

Okay, you've caught me. I don't use private browsing for safe transactions on other peoples computers. I actually use it to hack Microsoft's mainframes without leaving a trace. Safari is amazingly good at that...go figure.

Good thing my dad doesn't no what those are:rolleyes:..

Somebody go call Bill and tell him we found his hacker :eek:!

*cough* thats why theres a reset safari mode as well..

well in terminal if you do this

say 'This is OS X'

It will say this is OS ten.

Same thing if you highlight the same text and go to Safari>Services>Speech>Start Speaking Text
or if you put in an applescript..
:p

OS X also lists drive space in GB when when giving the number of GiB (i.e. it is not IEEE 1541 compliant). Just because the operating system says it does not make it correct.

oh snap, :eek:

I personally believe everything that my computer tells me.

Zalister, this is your mac speaking.... go slap the next person you see in the face... !

It's funny how everything I read online is true!

Dang it! Zalister, why did you slap me?

Steve Jobs told me to do it! He spoke to me, from my Mac!

(on a side note, why can't my Mac sound more like Keira Knightly or something?)

she is hot ( a bit lacking in some areas) but her voice is soo annoying, waay too posh..

Oh like I could ever tell the difference. Anything that doesn't have a twang sounds cool to me.

Given the drift of theme in this thread, despite all evidence to the contrary, it seems OS X should be pronounced: "Oh yes, sex."

:)

I wish my gf would say that.. :D