MacOS

macOS

Screenshot of the OS X El Capitan desktop in dark mode
Developer	Apple Inc.
Written in	C C++[1] Objective-C Swift[2]
OS family	Macintosh, Unix
Working state	Current
Source model	Closed source (with open source components)
Initial release	March 24, 2001; 23 years ago (2001-03-24)
Latest release	10.15.5 Supplemental Update (June 1, 2020; 4 years ago (2020-06-01)) [±]
Latest preview	10.15.6 beta 4 (July 9, 2020; 4 years ago (2020-07-09)) [±]
Marketing target	Personal computing
Available in	40 languages[3]
List of languages [as of macOS Catalina]: Arabic, Catalan, Croatian, Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), English (India), English (United Kingdom), English (United States), Finnish, French (Canada), French (France), German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Latin America), Spanish (Spain), Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
Update method	System Preferences (10.14+) Mac App Store (10.8–10.13) Software Update (10.0–10.7)
Platforms	Silicon (11.0-present) ARM64 (11.0–present) x86-64 (10.4.7–present) IA-32 (10.4.4–10.6.8; discontinued) PowerPC (10.0–10.5.8; discontinued)
Kernel type	Hybrid (XNU)
Default user interface	Aqua (Graphical)
License	Commercial software, proprietary software
Preceded by	Classic Mac OS
Official website	www.apple.com/macos
Support status
Supported

macOS, named Mac OS X from 2001 to 2012 and OS X until 2016,^[4] is an operating system (OS) for computers made by Apple Inc. These are called Macintosh computers, or Macs. It differs from other computers, as macOS is supposed to run only on Macs and not on other computers. However, people have made macOS run on computers that are not Macs. This is called Hackintosh and violates macOS' license agreement.

macOS first came out in 2001, and is completely different from the "classic" Mac OS that it replaced. Unlike the first operating system, macOS (since OS X) is based on the UNIX operating system (current versions have UNIX 03 certification^[5]) and on technologies developed between 1985 and 1997 at NeXT, a company that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs created after leaving Apple in 1985. The "X" in Mac OS X and OS X is the Roman numeral for the number 10 and is pronounced as such. The core of macOS is an open source OS called Darwin, but Darwin itself cannot run macOS software.

macOS releases are named after types of big cats, or California landmarks, and has a version number that starts with 10.0, 11.0, 12.0, 13.0 & 14.0. The latest version of macOS is macOS Sonoma (14.2.1).

1. ↑ "What Is the I/O Kit?". IOKit Fundamentals. Apple considered several programming languages for the I/O Kit and chose a restricted subset of C++.
2. ↑ "What's New in Swift". Apple Developer (Video). June 14, 2016. At 2:40. Archived from the original on August 4, 2016. Retrieved June 16, 2016.
3. ↑ "macOS – How to Upgrade – Apple". Apple. Archived from the original on September 27, 2016. Retrieved September 28, 2016.
4. ↑ Patel, Nilay (February 16, 2012). "Apple officially renames Mac OS X to OS X, drops the 'Mac'". The Verge. Vox Media. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
5. ↑ "Mac OS X Version 10.5 on Intel-based Macintosh computers". The Open Group. Archived from the original on May 11, 2008. Retrieved December 4, 2014.