Cheetah , puma , jaguar , Panthera onca , tiger , leopard , snow leopard and lion . Zoo display ? Animal Planet card ? really , these are monikers for each version of Apple ’s O Xoperating organisation . Cheetah was released in March 2001 and the newest embodiment of OS X , Lion ( v10.7 ) , was released in January 2011 .
Apple is n’t the only computer party to name its offerings after images easy conjure by the universal public . Google , for example , names its Android operating systems after sweets like cupcakes , gingerbread and honeycomb [ source : Sutter ] .
While Google is n’t probable to run out of dessert deed of conveyance anytime shortly , there are a finite identification number of big cat specie – and Apple ’s already named an operating system of rules after almost all of them ( they ’ve capture Lynx and Cougar brand , too ) . There are , however , still a couple 12 mintage of small- and medium - sized barbaric cat whose name calling are still up for grab , like theocelotand jaguarundi .
With Apple ’s taste for consistently naming its products , odds are they ’ll want to remain with feline - favorable labeling . It ’s the same approaching the company accept when it slap a lowercase " i " at the stem of a new product line : iPhone , iPod , iMac , iWork , iLife and iPad .
But why choose symbolical figure instead of numbers ? After all , it ’s all ones and zero point to operating system architect anyway . Turns out , the tricky OS name are chosen with consumer in nous . It ’s less confusing to remember a name like Lion or else of a issue like 10.7 . Lengthy combinations of letters and numbers seem to be particularly unmanageable to call back . Quick , what pressman model do you own ?
Still , Apple ’s never revealed the impulsion behind its nominate strategies . It has n’t escaped the care of Mac following that some of the operating organization name correspond with World War II German armoured vehicles , such as the Panther and Tiger [ germ : Tank Museum ] . Some critic believe Apples OS public figure were inspire by British Mac - clone - maker Shaye , a challenger that gave Apple a abbreviated but powerful run for its money during the mid-1990s . Shaye ’s calculator were mention for Leo , panthers , tiger , leopards , jaguars , pumas and cheetahs , among others – similar to the titles that Apple has used for its operating systems since 2001 .
Microsoft – one of Apple ’s master rivals – has oscillated between nominate its operating systems with numbers game and names . For model , it release Windows 1.0 in 1985 , Windows 95 ( version number 4.0 ) in 1995 , Windows Vista ( version number 6.0 ) in 2006 and Windows 7 ( version number 6.1 ) in 2009 [ source : Microsoft ] .
Today , Apple rate fourthly among the creation ’s bombastic information processing system companies , behind HP , Acer and Dell , but is pull ahead land with the popularity of wandering devices like the iPad [ seed : Brodkin ] . And that ’s a lot of sales , no matter what the product is cite .
