up vote 10 down vote favorite
2

Or does it even matter?

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm editing a ton of question titles. I tend to change OSX to OS X just out of personal preference, but I wonder if that will annoy anyone?

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4  
Oh it matters ;-) this crowd is picky, detail-oriented, and very vocal – bmike♦ Jul 29 '11 at 18:31
@bmike thus the barrage of teeny jargon-related questions! CHAOS has a strict no-toe-stomping policy. – Abby T. Miller♦ Jul 29 '11 at 18:32
You are off to a great start - getting consensus, asking - but taking action nonetheless :-) This joint is starting to look "real classy". – bmike♦ Jul 29 '11 at 18:38
Detail-oriented? Moi? Probably avidly so, and it's the attention to detail (amongst other things) that makes this joint all the classier :-) – Graham Perrin Aug 1 '11 at 14:46

3 Answers

up vote 16 down vote accepted

Apple's Mac OS X Lion website, documentation, and marketing material all have spaces between OS and X. I'd assume OS X is the correct way to spell OS X. Sidebar, Mac OS X is pronounced Mac Oh Ess Ten, not Oh Ess Ex. This can be confirmed by using the say command in the terminal:

$ say OS X             # Returns Oh Ess Ten
$ say OSX              # Returns Oh Ess Ex
$ say X                # Returns Ex
$ say Roman numeral X  # Returns Ex

Also, as noted by michaelmichael the proper spelling would be Mac OS X.

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That's what I thought. We just like to be careful - sometimes people get snippy when we bust in and rearrange all the furniture! (To wit: meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/1666/…) – Abby T. Miller♦ Jul 28 '11 at 15:25
Is there any footage of Jobs saying "Oh Ess Ten"? – Randy6T9 Jul 29 '11 at 10:36
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Almost certainly. If not steve-jobs, I have certainly heard other Apple people speak the word "ten" (never heard Apple say "X"). – Graham Perrin Aug 2 '11 at 16:02
apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq311 at 13:33 on the timeline, "First: when we deliver Mac OS X Lion …" (pronounced ten). – Graham Perrin Aug 2 '11 at 16:08
up vote 7 down vote

To be really nitpicky, it's Mac OS X. They're fanatical about this in Apple Store retail training.

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Is that something I should be striving for when I'm editing? Or is it "colloquially" ok to just leave it at OS X? – Abby T. Miller♦ Jul 29 '11 at 15:09
2  
You know what? I stand corrected. Even though apple.com/osx 404s, all the branding on apple.com/macosx talks about OS X Lion - no "Mac". Perhaps they've changed their stance since I heard the above anecdote. I'm sure it won't matter much unless Mac OS is still in version 10 by the time iOS reaches its 10th version. – michaelmichael Jul 29 '11 at 15:19
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Yeah, they changed their stance with Lion for some reason and are using "OS X" on the website and marketing material. Though for some reason they still use "Mac OS X" in the actual software. Bizzare... – Kyle Cronin♦ Jul 29 '11 at 18:26
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It's always been Mac OS X for a long time, but the people that "read the tea leaves" and watch each slide of every keynote that apple publishes have noticed Apple to start to write OS X when it used to always have Mac before the OS. Long time observers feel some references to OS X may stand alone when referring to commonality between iOS and Mac OS X. Best to use Mac until the stand alone usage gains traction or it's clearly meant to be inclusive of iOS and Mac OS X. – bmike♦ Jul 29 '11 at 18:39
Thanks michaelmichael, I updated my post. – Aaron Lake Aug 4 '11 at 14:17
up vote 2 down vote

Suggestions

I should:

  1. always discourage OSX (with or without a Mac prefix)
  2. encourage Mac OS X whilst Apple support and licensing for OS X is limited to Mac hardware — currently in Apple — Legal there is no OS X without Mac; System Information in the first release of Lion describes Mac OS X …; and so on
  3. without wishing to speculate, consider the possibility that Apple may one day license OS X for use on hardware that is not Mac — not to be confused with past and present OSx86 (Hackintosh) approaches.

Related (but not listed as such in the sidebar)

What is the difference between [mac] and [apple]? (2010-08-17) — AFAICT focused on tagging

On the right name of Apple products and softwares (2010-08-18)

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