Apple Has A New, California-Based Naming Scheme For OS X, Starting With OS X Mavericks

Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi said that the company was facing a big problem with the latest update to its Mac operating system, OS X. Having used names like Panther, Leopard, and Mountain Lion for its nine updates, Federighi said the company was in danger of running out of cat names.

“We don’t want to be the first development team to be delayed by the lack of big cats,” he said.

Federighi joked that he was considering calling the new version OS X Sea Lion, before concluding that approach would be pretty limiting too. Instead, starting with the update that Apple is announcing today, the company is switching to a new naming scheme, based on locations in California. The first name? OS X Mavericks, named after the surfing location in Northern California.

Of course, the name isn’t the only new thing about about the update. We covered the features themselves in a separate post.

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