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It's the first time in the 20 year history of Mac OS X that the major version number has changed. They're simply protecting against the likely possibility that

It's the first time in the 20 year history of Mac OS X that the major version number has changed. They're simply protecting against the likely possibility that some apps don't bother to check the major version. Going forward, expect the major version number to change each year, like iOS. But for apps built against older versions of the SDK, the major version will always be 10.

jon-wood 6y ago
How is Mac OS X two decades old? It feels like just yesterday I started my first real job, developing websites on a computer running Mac OS 10.1.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  It’s because the fundamentals of the macOS user-experience haven’t changed much since OS X’s introduction of the dock and their fancy GUI effects: the “genie” window minimise is still there! And generally speaking, macOS’s aesthetics have been consistent too - we only saw Dark Mode added very recently, for example. Apple has also been very conservative about adding major user-visible features to macOS lately - but that’s more attributable to them devoting their resources to iOS instead of macOS. Windows, on the other hand, updates its appearance (and adds (or removes) gimmicks) with each major release - even completely upending the UX fundamentals in Windows 8. Also consider that we used to have to reformat/reinstall computer OSs more regularly in the past - and having to do reinstalls makes you think about your computer UX as you spend time changing the settings from the defaults to your custom preferences. I remember having to reinstall Windows 95-98 every 6-9 months, and Windows XP once every year or so. Since Windows 7 things have been a lot more stable - my current Windows 10 install would have been ~4 years old now if it weren’t for me losing all my documents in the October 2018 update... (all I got was $400 from MS, ugh)
fpgaminer 6y ago
That makes sense. Thank you for clarifying.

jon-wood 6y ago

How is Mac OS X two decades old? It feels like just yesterday I started my first real job, developing websites on a computer running Mac OS 10.1.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
It’s because the fundamentals of the macOS user-experience haven’t changed much since OS X’s introduction of the dock and their fancy GUI effects: the “genie” window minimise is still there! And generally speaking, macOS’s aesthetics have been consistent too - we only saw Dark Mode added very recently, for example. Apple has also been very conservative about adding major user-visible features to macOS lately - but that’s more attributable to them devoting their resources to iOS instead of macOS. Windows, on the other hand, updates its appearance (and adds (or removes) gimmicks) with each major release - even completely upending the UX fundamentals in Windows 8. Also consider that we used to have to reformat/reinstall computer OSs more regularly in the past - and having to do reinstalls makes you think about your computer UX as you spend time changing the settings from the defaults to your custom preferences. I remember having to reinstall Windows 95-98 every 6-9 months, and Windows XP once every year or so. Since Windows 7 things have been a lot more stable - my current Windows 10 install would have been ~4 years old now if it weren’t for me losing all my documents in the October 2018 update... (all I got was $400 from MS, ugh)

fpgaminer 6y ago

That makes sense. Thank you for clarifying.