Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

WebHead

macrumors 6502
Dec 29, 2004
471
103
Yes. In fact, Craig Federighi expressly mentions it in his statement: “macOS Big Sur is a major update that advances the legendary combination of the power of UNIX with the ease of use of the Mac, and delivers our biggest update to design in more than a decade."

OS X was always intended to be a scalable "single" operating system - the promise is finally becoming reality.
 
  • Like
Reactions: lunarworks

darkmatter343

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 18, 2017
348
237
Toronto, Canada
Yes. In fact, Craig Federighi expressly mentions it in his statement: “macOS Big Sur is a major update that advances the legendary combination of the power of UNIX with the ease of use of the Mac, and delivers our biggest update to design in more than a decade."

OS X was always intended to be a scalable "single" operating system - the promise is finally becoming reality.

ok cool, I didn’t hear the “Unix” part.
 

darkmatter343

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 18, 2017
348
237
Toronto, Canada
Not sure if he said it in his presentation or only the press release.

Found it in the press release just now. Its odd they are moving to 11, because OS9 or System9 wasn’t Unix based, so moving to OSX 10 made sense because it was a major change under the hood. From the Nanokerel in OS9 to UNIX kernel in OSX 10.x

Even back in the mid 2000’s when Apple did change from PPC architecture to Intel, they never changed the version number, it remained 10.x

So I guess I’m 🤔 as to why now.

It’s not like 1) the underlying OS is changing, they aren’t moving away from UNIX
2) They already swapped architectures in mid way in 10.x before...
3) and finally they already completely revamped the UI moving from 10.9 Mavericks to 10.10 Yosemite.

Just found it odd when Tim said all these changes warranted a new OS and a version change. Technically moving from PPC to Intel should have moved the OS to 11 then, or even the UI changes in Yosemite.

But they have their reasons 😎
 

illitrate23

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2004
681
271
uk
I don't think what is under the hood relates to the name. As you say, 10.0 was released on PPC. Yes, it included Darwin, but that's behind the scenes. The big number version changes seem to involve a big change to the User Interface. System 7 was a massive deal when it came out because they overhauled most of the UI features. 8 was a smaller step. 9 was supposed to be revolutionary, there was talk of a document orientated OS and fully customisable window components. but in the end, it didn't happen that way.
Then X came out. It happened to include Darwin, sure, but as much of a big change was the Aqua interface.
And so now, Big Sur has a huge overhaul of the UI, so they move to 11.0

To say Apple put form over function is a bit disingenuous, but I think it's fair to say they put form equal to function. And it seems, with the OS version numbers, that to GUI drives at least the big (and first point) version number changes.
 

Falhófnir

macrumors 603
Aug 19, 2017
6,146
7,001
It looks like the decision was quite last minute as there are still references to 10.16 in there?
 
  • Like
Reactions: twanj

darkmatter343

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 18, 2017
348
237
Toronto, Canada
Then X came out. It happened to include Darwin, sure, but as much of a big change was the Aqua interface.
And so now, Big Sur has a huge overhaul of the UI, so they move to 11.0

Yes, but 10.9 Mavericks to 10.10 Yosemite also had a massive UI overhaul and they kept going with 10.x... granted they didn't allow for iOS apps to run, nor did they change more of the functions like adding Control Centre etc... so I guess I'll give them that for changing to 11.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: illitrate23

homersimpsonmacdev

macrumors newbie
Jun 23, 2020
7
15
Screenshot 2020-06-23 at 21.40.38.png


Yep - Darwin Kernel is still there ;)
 

iamMacPerson

macrumors 68040
Jun 12, 2011
3,488
1,927
AZ/10.0.1.1
It looks like the decision was quite last minute as there are still references to 10.16 in there?

Yes. When downloading it presented itself as version 10.16. 'Get Info' for the install app shows 16.0.10. Somewhere else it referred to itself as 10.16 and not 11.0 so I would say this was a very last minute decision.

View attachment 926804

Yep - Darwin Kernel is still there ;)

I knew it would be but I just wanted to say AWWWWW WHAT A CUTE LITTLE DEVIL!
 

ssls6

macrumors 6502a
Feb 7, 2013
593
185
Or the computer in your pocket (iPhone) transforms in the presence of external displays/input devices. The implications are far reaching.
 

Wowfunhappy

macrumors 68000
Mar 12, 2019
1,745
2,087
nor did they change more of the functions like adding Control Centre

Actually, Yosemite was when they "Today Widgets" on Macs for the first time, so it's not such a dissimilar change. Mavericks lets you compose messages from within Notification Center, but that's it.

Big Sur is still a bigger design change overall though. Moreover, when Yosemite came out the OS was still branded "OS X", so they couldn't really shift the version number.
 

MHenr

macrumors regular
Dec 22, 2008
116
146
Craig talked about this in his interview with John Gruber (Daring Fireball) as well.
He specifically mentioned the fact that users wouldn't need to worry about for example Terminal disappearing.

Direct quote:
"I mean, I don't how they can even begin to come up with that theory. I get people coming up asking if we can still launch Terminal? Yes, you can. These Macs are Macs. We're not changing any of this."
 

MHenr

macrumors regular
Dec 22, 2008
116
146
Of course it does, as does iPad OS and iOS. What exactly causes you tro think it wouldn't?

A lot of people don't know iOS and iPad OS are *nix systems, like MacOS.
Because MacOS 11 seems to be a bridge between the desktop and the mobile OS's (at least design-wise), the initial reaction was that OS11 would loose it's UNIX foundation.
 

timidpimpin

Suspended
Nov 10, 2018
1,121
1,318
Cascadia
A lot of people don't know iOS and iPad OS are *nix systems, like MacOS.
Because MacOS 11 seems to be a bridge between the desktop and the mobile OS's (at least design-wise), the initial reaction was that OS11 would loose it's UNIX foundation.
I still don't understand the logic that because it looks more mobile that it will somehow no longer include a BSD kernel. It literally makes no logical sense.

Also, virtually every mobile OS on earth, that isn't developed by Microsoft, is based on either Linux or UNIX.
 
  • Like
Reactions: johnalan

MHenr

macrumors regular
Dec 22, 2008
116
146
I still don't understand the logic that because it looks more mobile that it will somehow no longer include a BSD kernel. It literally makes no logical sense.

Neither do I.
It literally took a quote from Craig Federighi to convince some people something like Terminal.app wouldn't disappear.
Even he called it bonkers.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.