Apple had an uncharacteristic slip up and may revealed Mac OS X’s new name in technical documents in Apple’s Environment section on their website. AppleInsider managed to grab a screenshot of the mistake, and it seems to back up the rumor that Apple is planning to rename the flagship operating system to macOS.
This would be in convention with the rest of the names Apple employs for operating systems, mainly iOS and tvOS. iOS actually used to be called iPhone OS before Apple streamlined its name. Mac OS X, which is frequently shortened to OS X, only picked up the “X” portion of its name when Apple switched the foundation of the operating system to Unix.
Brazil’s MacMagazine previously reported that a programmer had found the new macOS naming convention in the private framework of a yet unreleased OS X feature as well, called “FlightUtilities.” This feature is expected to allow native flight tracking in OS X, or seemingly its successor.
Apple has since changed macOS to OS X in the mentioned technical documents, an illuminating move depending on how likely you feel the coincidence was an honest mistake.
If Apple does decide to change OS X to macOS, expect the announcement to come during an event. The next major scheduled event is Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June 2016.
