It's not necessarily strict semantic versioning. However, Apple has always had a distinction between major and minor updates. Minor updates are installed on most Macs automatically, whereas major ones are not. Major updates have longer developer preview and public beta periods. Major releases continue to receive security patches for a couple of years.

If Apple isn't going to follow any types of rules, then what's even the point?

I kinda view them as using a modified version of semantic versioning where, if we take A.B.C, the normal roles of A and B are combined into B, and A is the big annual release with the media hype and advertising and shiniest features at the forefront.

Meaning A and B bumps could be breaking, but C is still just for bugfixes.

Sure it's not a great system from the technical side of things, but it shouldn't be shocking that Apple puts marketing first.

> It's implied in the fact that Apple has different types of updates in the first place.

As far as I understand, Semantic Versioning is not a synonym for "versioning scheme", but refers to a specific scheme (https://semver.org). So I don't understand how Apple having any versioning scheme implies that it must be semver.

I edited my post slightly. I never meant to imply that Apple follows strict semantic versioning—and in fact, they clearly don't, since they stayed on one major release for well over a decade.

It's okay if Apple's "minor releases" occasionally have breaking changes. But I don't think "wait until the next major release to remove an entire language runtime which has been built-in for 15+ years" is too much to ask.

Semver is a particular set of rules for defining what is a patch level, what is a minor update, and what is a major update. Before semver, these ideas still existed, but different groups had different ideas of what they meant.

That is perhaps still true in some large companies.