You're confidently incorrect. If you weren't paying attention at the time, it's literally in the first sentence of the Wikipedia article. This isn't hard to check.

"OS X" was the official name for five years, from 2011-2016. It wasn't short for anything. The "Mac" prefix had been officially removed from it for that time.

This reminds me of when my grade school teacher kept trying to insist that my friend, named Alex, was actually named Alexander. I think he originally brought in a copy of his birth certificate to shut them up.

I disagree with the Wikipedia article's framing. There wasn't some sort of major rebrand in 2011, Apple just stopped writing "Mac" at the start of the name. Old-timers knew what it stood for.

It's like how "Mac" is still short for "Macintosh", even though Apple basically never uses the full name anymore.

You can disagree, downvote, and flag all you want but it won't change reality. I remember the rebrand from OS-X to macOS firsthand circa something like 2010-2012.

At the time I found it mildly frustrating because of the stupid casing on top of the pointlessly annoying pedantic distinction destined to cause confusion. As if there were another "OS-X" of any significance.

Your memory is incorrect. The branding sequence was System (from before I remember up to 7.5) -> Mac OS (7.6 to 9) -> Mac OS X (10.0 to ??) -> OS X (??) -> macOS (starting after 2015). Edit: Sibling comment from htimsenyawed looks right to me.

macOS was originally Mac OS X and short referenced as OS X. The official name change from Mac OS X to macOS began with release 10.12 Sierra, the previous version was called Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan. The transition to macOS from Mac OS X occurred in 2016 as that was the year that Sierra was announced and released.

Also, and I'm not sure if I remember that correctly, I think during "Mac OS X" times they said it is pronounced as "mac OS ten", because X is the roman numeral for 10.

Wikipedia has references about it where Apple themselves even back then used either pronunciation, though. Also a reference that says while it stands for 10 it also references the X commonly found in many Unix things because of the Unix roots of Mac OS X.

You’re missing the intermediate transition to “OS X”

Apple a pretty big deal about all the rebrands. From "System" (verions 1-7), to "Mac OS" (8 and 9), to "Mac OS X" (10.0-10.7), to "OS X" (10.8-10.12), to "macOS" (10.13+).

It was clear that the OS wasn't thought of as a separate thing in the early days. The latest one looks like a typo.

Indeed, you can see between 2011 and 2012 (for example) that Apple's PR site changed from calling it "Mac OS X" to simply calling it "OS X".

2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20111130104524/http://www.apple....

2012: https://web.archive.org/web/20111130104524/http://www.apple....

Interestingly Lion was called "Mac OS X Lion" upon release[0], but then their website[1] called it "OS X Lion" predominantly.

[0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2011/07/20Mac-OS-X-Lion-Avail...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110705041542/http://www.apple....

2012 link is the same as the 2011 link.

Actual 2012 link: https://web.archive.org/web/20121207053101/http://www.apple....

Woops, copy/paste struggles! Thanks, updated my 2012 link while I was still able to edit.

A rare inverted confidentally incorrect, when someone claims (incorrectly and with great confidence) that someone else is confidently incorrect.

> This reminds me of when my grade school teacher kept trying to insist that my friend, named Alex, was actually named Alexander. I think he originally brought in a copy of his birth certificate to shut them up.

This is like telling someone who is called Louis that his actual name is Hlodowig.

It was released as "Mac OS X", and then later shortened/rebranded to just "OS X". Unless you want to argue that the etymology of "OS X" is completely unrelated to "Mac OS X" and is merely coincidentally very similar, the statement "OS X was short for Mac OS X" is correct by all but the most pedantic definition.

Um actually, OS X was a distinct branding from Mac OS X.

I think they didn't start calling it Mac OS until 7.5 or so. Before that it was "system 7", "system 6", etc.