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Apple finishing up Mavericks as development shifts to OS X ‘Syrah’ with iOS 7-influence

Syrah

Apple is closing in on finishing up work on OS X Mavericks ahead of its public launch, according to a source familiar with the new operating system’s development. This source says that the operating system will reach Golden Master status internally by the end of this week or early next week, and it will be labeled as a build number in the high 13A590s or low 13A600s. This will be a slight increase over the current developer build that is version 13A584. Earlier today, Apple seeded OS X Mavericks build 13A598 to members of its AppleSeed program, but it is unclear if that new version will ever reach developers.

Screen Shot 2013-10-03 at 4.47.37 PM

AppleSeed members believe that this build is a GM candidate, but a source says that Apple is already internally seeding newer builds. The source has also corroborated our previous report by indicating that OS X Mavericks is currently scheduled to arrive on the Mac App Store within the last ten days of the month of October. Mavericks was supposed to reach GM status a few weeks ago, but critical bugs have kept pushing back the release, according to claims from sources.

Since being announced at WWDC, OS X Mavericks is said to have picked up a few minor unannounced features. Namely, the Messages and FaceTime applications have received the ability to block phone numbers and Apple IDs from sending the Mavericks user messages and/or FaceTime calls. This addition brings parity to iOS 7 and the two operating systems will sync in this manner. While this enhancement is probably not surprising, it has not been present in any Mavericks Developer Preview to date. (Update: The aforementioned addition is coming in a point update in the coming weeks) Mavericks will also bring the launch of iCloud Keychain…

With OS X Mavericks nearing its public debut, and iOS 7 having arrived last month, Apple is said to already have diverted the majority of its OS X and iOS resources to development of the next two Apple operating systems: OS X 10.10 and iOS 8.

AnalyticsViews to 9to5Mac from 10.10 began in September

OS X 10.10 is internally codenamed Syrah (yes, another wine), and sources hint that Apple has been toying with a new design across the system that is akin, but not as dramatically different, to the new designs found in iOS 7 and iCloud.com. As for iOS 8, development of that OS is making headway, and it will likely bring feature enhancements to Maps.

Yesterday we reported that Apple has begun training its AppleCare support staff on OS X Mavericks. While OS X 10.10 and iOS 8 are not scheduled to be announced until next summer, users can expect a few updates in the near future (in addition to Mavericks): a new version of OS X 10.8.5 launched today, and we expect iOS 7.0.3 and iOS 7.1 to arrive by the end of the year. Apple also has several hardware releases still up its sleeve for this fall including multiple new iPads, Macs, and perhaps a fresh TV-related device.

Top image via Flickr

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Comments

  1. Omar Sharif - 10 years ago

    OS X 10.10 ??? Don’t you mean 11 ?

  2. The Yamanator - 10 years ago

    you’d think the next OSX would be 11, not 10.10.. :-/

    • Tom Saunders (@tmsndrs) - 10 years ago

      No you wouldn’t. A new skin doesn’t warrant a whole new version. This is usually reserved for a complete rebuild of the OS, this is just a re-theme.

      • krixxxxtian - 10 years ago

        It should be 11 XI, because if you even read the wikipedia link you sent you’ll see where it says apple, that they don’t use the second number as 2 digits

    • Chris Andersen (@boegvad) - 10 years ago

      Versioning is not a decimal system.

  3. Kieran Navickas - 10 years ago

    When the hell are they going to give up 10? Just move on to 11? This is probably the only thing I like about MS… Windows 7, 8. Fuck, all the .10. X is over!

    • k - 10 years ago

      Windows 8 is still version 6.2. Why do you care about Mac OX version number?

    • Daniel Birchall - 10 years ago

      Short memory? Windows went 1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8. Even my toddler counts better than that. :)

      • daviddibattiste534491948 - 10 years ago

        The early versions of Windows you list weren’t the same OS as the later ones; they were graphic interfaces running on top of MS-DOS, modern versions are based on Windows NT (versions of which were also released through the 90s). The actual count is NT 1, NT 2, NT 3, NT 4, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8.

      • Michael Adelmann - 10 years ago

        @daviddibattiste534491948: there were no NT 1 & 2. Windows NT started with 3.1 which shared the same user interface with the once popular Windows 3.1 (hence the name NT 3.1).

    • Rick Mills - 10 years ago

      Just because they slap a 7 or an 8 on it, that doesn’t change the OS. In development terms it goes Major, Minor, Bugfix so for 10.9.1 ’10’ is the major, ‘9’ is the minor and ‘1’ is the bugfix.

      Windows instead just goes 7, 8, 9, etc with bugfixes having stupidly long commit numbers instead.

      The only time Apple will move to ’11’ is when a complete new OS is created. Given that we don’t need a complete rewrite (no, we really don’t…regardless of what you think, we dont) you wont see ’11’ any time soon.

    • Forgot Windows 8.1 already?

    • Kieran’s got a point guys. I have to agree that Windows versioning (or the version they use for marketing purposes rather) is easier to remember.

  4. nortorovega - 10 years ago

    Reblogged this on Apple News Now and commented:
    It’s strange that Apple chose to keep going up to 10.10 and not just go to OS 11. For me I can’t wait for OS X 10.10 to come. If it comes with a more iOS 7 inspired interface I guess it would look great. And there would be more familiarity for iOS and OS X.

    • Adam Markon (@amarkon88) - 10 years ago

      That’s not how versioning works. Version numbers are A.B.C where A is the major version number, B is the minor version number, C is the revision number. They won’t go to 11 until they completely rewrite the way the OS works and behaves, and now that it’s so integrated with iOS, it’s not likely that will happen soon.

  5. Richard Getz (@RichGetz) - 10 years ago

    10.10 is probably more for marketing, but it does make you wonder the direction. Apple ‘ran out of big cats’ thus Mavericks, and I would not think them to do a name change for one release.

    One might think OS XI would be a huge step for the OS and perhaps Apple is not ready for that. Perhaps there is a core function/look/feature that should have been ready, but is not.

    I agree, when will this stop 10.10.10 starting to look more like an IP address :P

  6. shamguy4 - 10 years ago

    they are gonna release 10.10 on 10/10 …lol

  7. David H. (@wizard32843) - 10 years ago

    What? Is 10.10 even surprising? I’d suppose there have to be some drastic technological changes for they to bump it to XI.

    (Besides, if it’s just for marketing, wouldn’t Mavericks be a better time to drop the X? New naming system and all. So no.)

    • They dropped the “Mac” bit a while ago, making it just “OS X”. If they dropped the “X” too, it’d just be “OS”.

      Besides, I don’t know about anyone else, but “Mac OS” – without the X – makes me think of OS 9.

      • Vincent Tucker - 10 years ago

        at this point with iOS as popular as it is it makes for super powerful marketing.
        when you break it down and look at it i OS vs OS X
        icome on you know t’s gonna take a lot to beat that monster duo down

      • Graham Perrin - 10 years ago

        Technically, and for at least one certification: OS X is Mac OS X.

        To see the ProductName, in Terminal:

        sw_vers

  8. William - 10 years ago

    Reblogged this on William's iBlog and commented:
    Critical bugs?

  9. Knezevic Bojan - 10 years ago

    ios8…. dude ios7 is still not complete, they have a ton of stuff to fix, i can see that on my ipad

  10. Travis de Valle - 10 years ago

    You realise ‘Mac OSX 10.10’ already exists right? It was released in 2001 and is otherwise known as ‘Puma’. Seriously, learn some basic mathematics and version sequencing. ‘10.11’ was also already released, being an incremental update to Puma. The next version of Mac OS will either use a completely different naming scheme or will be either ‘Mac OS XI’ or ‘Mac OS X 11.0’.

  11. BDK (@BDKennedy) - 10 years ago

    Or it could just simply be iOS 8 across the board.

  12. Jamie Purches - 10 years ago

    You say “Namely, the Messages and FaceTime applications have received the ability to block phone numbers and Apple IDs from sending the Mavericks user messages and/or FaceTime calls. This addition brings parity to iOS 7 and the two operating systems will sync in this manner.”

    Seems it doesn’t. I’ve blocked contacts on my iPhone (iOS7), however while messages sent from a blocked contact do not appear on my phone, they still come through in Messages on my laptop running Mavericks.

    Anyone have any idea how to arrange it so I don’t see messages from blocked contacts in Messages in Mavericks?

    Thanks.