> But did Mojave come before or after Sierra?

Idk, but it doesn’t matter. If you need to know which version came before or after just compare the version numbers instead. The human names are not meant for that.

Yes but How do you know which cat or geological feature corresponds to which version number?

How do you know which Windows came first: XP, ME, Vista, 98, 10?

I mean even when Apple uses sequential, numerical names you can't always answer the question of which came first: the iPhone 8 and iPhone X (10) were announced ~simultaneously! And there wasn't even a 9!

My point is it really doesn't matter which big cat or California landmark came first. It's trivial to find out if you want to, but it's not terribly important to encode that in the name you're using to identify your product.

To be fair Microsoft have moved some number for the last 4 releases of Windows

Well, 98 is higher than 10.

But perhaps they should adopt a chicken-egg naming scheme.

> How do you know which cat or geological feature corresponds to which version number?

You don't need to know that. It does not matter.

These human names are for marketing. They have no significance other than that.

> You don't need to know that. It does not matter.

When a vendor says "we are dropping support for MacOS High Sierra and earlier" then it does matter.

Every software vendor of any significant size knows to use version numbers of macOS, not just marketing names of macOS, when communicating that kind of information.

Here are some random examples taken from some of the software that I use on my systems.

JetBrains CLion system requirements:

> macOS 10.14 or later

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/clion/installation-guide.html

System requirements for using Slack

> MacOS OS X 10.15 or above

https://slack.com/help/articles/115002037526-System-requirem...

Davinci Resolve 18 Tech Specs

> Mac 10.15 Catalina or later.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/tec...

Mac Compatibility with Live – Live 11 – Live Universal build

> Apple Silicon: macOS 11.6.6 Big Sur through macOS 13 Ventura

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001261150-Mac-...

Apple? https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201260

Wikipedia? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_version_history#Releas...

That is not true: when some good logic is applied to naming, human names are too in order, with the alphabetic order, so that at any time you could know what you are talking about (at least easily if it is "before" or "after" each one)

> when some good logic is applied to naming, human names are too in order, with the alphabetic order, so that at any time you could know what you are talking about

That's just like, your opinion.

Even operating systems that try to follow that idea are not fully able to do it.

For example, Ubuntu has been using alphabetically ordered names ever since version 5.10, which was released in October 2005.

But sooner or later they have to wrap. And they already did that once.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelopmentCodeNames

So now, for someone on the outside who tries to apply this idea that names should encode release order, we still can't tell, which of the following was released first:

- Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat

or

- Ubuntu Lunar Lobster

Well, if all we know about Ubuntu is that the names are alphabetically sorted then we might think that Lunar Lobster came before Maverick Meerkat. But Ubuntu Lunar Lobster is the upcoming version 23.04. Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat was version 10.10, released all the way back in October 2010.

And so my point is, if you want to compare version release dates. Just look at the version numbers.

It is not sensible to claim that somehow the names have to be in alphabetical order.

Do you use alphabetical order for the hostnames of your computers?

Do you name your children in alphabetical order?

Maybe you do. But not everyone will, and that's perfectly fine.

> But sooner or later they have to wrap. And they already did that once.

Frankly, that's not a problem. They have 26 letters to go through, so that's 13 years.

13 years is a geological age in computing. By that point the previous product has been deprecated for so long it's basically a museum piece and nobody can spot it in the wild.

> 13 years is a geological age in computing. By that point the previous product has been deprecated for so long it's basically a museum piece and nobody can spot it in the wild.

Microsoft Windows XP was released to retail on October 25, 2001.

Extended support for Microsoft Windows XP ended on April 8, 2014.

~13 years after its release

Back then, in 2014, 13 years after its release, Windows XP still had a big market share according to for example this page from 2014 https://sourcedigit.com/6553-windows-xp-will-die-april-8-201...

Regardless. All I am saying is, there is no reason to try and insist that marketing name should encode version release date.

If you want to compare versions, use the version numbers and compare those. That's what the version numbers are for.

Not proud of this, but there is IBM X41 from 2005 in out family that is still running XP.

Hostname can have many orders: if it's a technical/location name like "dc-room-row" then it's in order. If it's a character name, they could follow the logic of the characters: some are leading (frontend), some are smarter (backend), some are...

If you had more than 20 children, you would clearly want some logic in naming. People often apply that to twins for example.

Anyway, that applies better to "more than a few" groups; Ubuntu did well because they release many versions, and you really rarely need to check against versions from 13 years ago with that release speed. Microsoft didn't need it for Windows because they only had 4 or 5 versions in 20 years.

Yeah, but which is the better big cat? Lion? Snow Leopard? Tiger?

Tiger

10.14 came after 10.12

Not sure, but Mountain Lion has to be a downgrade from those other cats, right?

10.12 came after 10.11. Nobody having to deal with this sort of thing is confused. Using a Mac, it is easier to get the version number than the code name. This argument is most of the time, if not always, used by people with no interest in trying to understand how it works.