macOS 10.16 ?

[richmond62]

Isn't that rather odd? I am running macOS 12 beta 5.

 

[gilby101]

With Big Sur (and later) there are two ways of asking macOS for the version number. The 'new' way returns 11.x or 12.x, the 'old' way returns 10.16 on both BS and Monterey. This is to assist developers who have dependencies on macOS version, but have not updated their software to the 'new' way.

You can see both in Terminal with the sw_vers command without and with a value for SYSTEM_VERSION_COMPAT:

sw_vers
ProductName: macOS
ProductVersion: 12.0
BuildVersion: 21A5304g
export SYSTEM_VERSION_COMPAT=1
sw_vers
ProductName: Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.16
BuildVersion: 21A5304g

LibreOffice is still using the 'old' version style.

Nothing mysterious. But interesting that the 'old' style version has not been changed to 10.17 for Monterey - but I guess this was only intended as a short term workaround for developers.

 

[richmond62]

As my brief flirtation with Big Sur (before I moved to the Monterey beta) was largely 'BS' it is indeed odd that 12 is marked as 10.16 as well: unless of course it is a covered admission that BS was 'BS'. :/

 

[mikecwest]

As my brief flirtation with Big Sur (before I moved to the Monterey beta) was largely 'BS' it is indeed odd that 12 is marked as 10.16 as well: unless of course it is a covered admission that BS was 'BS'. :/

No, it is only to maintain compatibility with apps that were not updated.

 

[richmond62]

Aha: thanks for that, although I reserve my opinion about MacOS 11: too quick and too hyped.