It says the <Name> <Version> in the "About This Mac" Apple menu item. In this case, it will be Sonoma 14.0.
Historically versioning is weird due to the integration of NextSTEP after Job's return to the company. First it was versioned up to 9, then the NextSTEP integration was 10, then subsequent major releases were minor bumps (ie 10.1, 10.2) as OSX was a brand unto itself until 11 which rebranded to MacOS and full versions were used again. So Sonoma is the 14th release from the NextSTEP integration. I think referring to them by names eased the confusion some.
Sonoma is the 21st release of a Mac operating system based on NeXTSTEP. The switch to 11 marked the transition to Apple Silicon. The code names have been used as an alternate name since 10.2 Jaguar as a way at the time to differentiate from and shame Microsoft’s Longhorn (Vista).
I've never heard someone pronounce it that way in my life until I saw the video. Maybe it's a regional thing, but it sounds like the wrong vowel sound at the end to me.
Yes, I agree with that post that the USian pronunciation as given there is better than the British one. But Jobs' rendering of the American pronunciation also sounds wrong to me because the final syllable doesn't generally rhyme with 'wire' as I've heard most Americans pronounce the word.
It may be regional. Jobs grew up in Mountain View and I grew up in Santa Clara, just a few miles down the road. My parents and teachers always said something resembling "jag-wire" in pronunciation.
That makes sense to me. Ahr/ire is a pair that gets swapped or blended in other American accents as well, after all! Many Southern accents basically do the same kind of blending but in the other direction.
It may be regional, but I was born and raised in Silicon Valley / SF South Bay, like Steve Jobs, and my parents and teachers all said "jagwire." I don't pronounce it that way myself anymore, but that's because if I say it I'm often talking about the car brand, and I know the brits pronounce it differently so I do the same.
Do some google search for "jagwire" and you'll find tons of results about Americans pronouncing it that way.
EDIT: The word comes from a Native American language via Portuguese. I'm not sure about the indigenous phonetics, but the Portuguese pronunciation is closer to "jagwire" than the British pronunciation.
I went to the wikipedia page, which is kinda the point. No other OS requires you too look it up. Even WatchOS and iOS directly use version numbers.
Saying it's due to NextStep integration sounds like a strange defense of this naming strategy (if that was your intention). They have version numbers, but they decide to use the "code name" as a product name.
Notice how Android clearly was alphabetical, until they realised people weren't getting that (or got sick of coming up with names of sugary foods), and went back to the number system.
Mac has not gone with alphabetical, but seemingly random names related to cats or places in California.
Various projects do the Alphabetical thing. If you're going to have names, it's a great way to do it. OpenStack, Ceph & Ubuntu all do that.
However it's still a challenge. I work with all of those daily and I often think about the project over-all and it's features or bugs in terms of the alphabetical name, but there is also a numerical name and I have to lookup and translate from it - when looking at diagnostic output from customer installs, or git tags, etc. I keep some subset of the translations in my head but not all them :)
I could have sworn the dessert names were code names and they did numbered releases too the entire time but they did drop the 1.x numbering for just whole versions.
MacOS versions have a number, which counts up, the same as iOS and WatchOS. "Sonoma" is a cutesy name for "MacOS 14", the same way that "Jammy Jellyfish" is the cutesy name for Ubuntu 22.04.
The version number is shown in the About This Mac page, which is the top menu item in the Apple menu at all times.
As mentioned in my post the NextSTEP integration - OSX - was a major branding effort for Apple. It was the reason for Job's return to Apple and was seen as the savior of the company. I think Apple wanted something to hang their hats on that lived for many years.
It's weird and clunky, but makes sense in the history of the company as all previous OSes were numbered. Yes, they probably should have moved off that convention earlier, probably by the time the Intel integration had happened at the very least.
How do you figure? Windows had 7, 8, skipped 9, 10, 11, and now 12 is coming.
Windows thought they'd never do a major update again, and tried to hold on to the 10 label, but then realized that wouldn't work. So 11 is a bit of a branding stumble, but we know, it came after 10.
You’re ignoring all yearly updates to Windows 10 and 11, most of them with news features enough that would be a major version if they were on macOS.
I mean[1]:
>As announced in July, the Windows 11 2023 Update (version 23H2) will be released in the fourth quarter of 2023. This new update will have the same servicing branch and code base as Windows 11, version 22H2 and will be cumulative with all the newly announced features. For devices on version 22H2, the 2023 Update will be delivered via a small enablement package (eKB)7. This continues the annual feature update cadence, with new feature updates released in the second half of the calendar year. This new version resets the 24 months of support for Home and Pro editions and 36 months of support for Enterprise and Education editions.
But Windows never used a separate name for minor versions, so there are only 6 exceptions (and hopefully no more). And a half of them are year numbers.
Mac OS X Server version 1.0 was Rhapsody 5.3. It still doesn't make sense even if you know the MacOS System was renamed to OS 8 to kill the clone license.
Historically versioning is weird due to the integration of NextSTEP after Job's return to the company. First it was versioned up to 9, then the NextSTEP integration was 10, then subsequent major releases were minor bumps (ie 10.1, 10.2) as OSX was a brand unto itself until 11 which rebranded to MacOS and full versions were used again. So Sonoma is the 14th release from the NextSTEP integration. I think referring to them by names eased the confusion some.
This gives a good rundown:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_version_history