OS X is the newest of Apple Inc.’s Mac OS line of operating systems.
Although, under its original name of Mac OS X, it was officially designated as simply “version 10” of the Mac OS, “version 9” had a completely different codebase, file system, design, and hardware support. Mac OS had been Apple’s primary operating system since 1984, and the family was backward compatible, so OS X supported an emulated version 9 until version 10.5.
Unlike its predecessor, OS X is a Unix operating system built on technology that had been developed at NeXT through the second half of the 1980s and up until Apple purchased the company in early 1997. It was first released in 1999 as Mac OS X Server 1.0, with a desktop-oriented version (Mac OS X v10.0) following in March 2001. Since then, six more distinct “client” and “server” editions of Mac OS X were released, thereafter starting with Mac OS X v10.7 Lion, OS X Server is no longer offered as a separate operating system product; instead, the server management tools are available for purchase separately. The most recent version OS X 10.9 Mavericks was first made available on October 22, 2013.
Until OS X 10.9 Mavericks, all OS X versions were named after big cats, with the exception of Mac OS X Server 1.0 and the original public beta. Prior to its release, version 10.0 was code named “Cheetah” internally at Apple, and version 10.1 was code named internally as “Puma”. After the immense buzz surrounding version 10.2, codenamed “Jaguar”, Apple’s product marketing began openly using the code names to promote the operating system. 10.3 was marketed as “Panther”, 10.4 as “Tiger”, 10.5 as “Leopard”, 10.6 as “Snow Leopard”, 10.7 as “Lion” and the current version 10.8 as “Mountain Lion”. “Panther”, “Tiger” and “Leopard” are registered as trademarks of Apple, but “Cheetah”, “Puma” and “Jaguar” have never been registered. Apple has also registered “Lynx” and “Cougar” as trademarks, though these were allowed to lapse.
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