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As Mavericks hits GM, Apple begins seeding nightly builds of OS X 10.9.1 as well as 10.10 ‘Syrah’

Last week, we reported that Apple has begun development of the successor to the upcoming OS X Mavericks: OS X 10.10. We reported hearing that the future operating system is internally dubbed “Syrah” (a type of wine), and now we have received evidence of the codename. Above is a screenshot of operating systems available for installation by Apple employees internally. As you can see, “Syrah” is available as an operating system newer than Mavericks and the recently released OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5…

We also understand that nightly builds of the operating system have recently begun being seeded to Apple employees for internal testing. We’re told that a small seeding round began in early September, and that the seeding has picked up in recent days and weeks. Perhaps as proof for this, page views to 9to5Mac.com from computers running OS X 10.10 have increased in recent days. An image from our Google Analytics is shown above. One or two new 10.10 builds become available for employees each weekday.

While we reported earlier that Apple is targeting a redesign of the OS X interface to mimic iOS 7’s new look for OS X 10.10, the current nightly builds are said to be nearly identical to the Golden Master version of OS X Mavericks. It’s unlikely that 10.10 seeds will gain new user-facing features or interface elements until well into development. Apple software engineering teams typically work on several projects independently, then pull them in all-together into the new operating system ahead of seed milestones.

Emphasizing the fact that OS X 10.10 is still very early in development is its current build number. We’re told that OS X 10.10 has seen approximately 30 seeds so far in development. For comparison, the first OS X Mavericks Developer Preview was build 476, while the first OS X Mountain Lion and Lion Previews were build numbers in the 100s range and 400s range, respectively. Nonetheless, it is likely that Apple is targeting a release of OS X 10.10 for sometime in 2014.

As OS X Mavericks moved to Golden Master status (the state in which the OS is ready to ship and/or be installed on new Macs), Apple moved a fair portion of its Mac software engineering resources onto 10.10. Other people on the team, however, are said to be working on updates to the OS X 10.9 Mavericks track. Apple is said to already be closing in on a point-release update (OS X 10.9.1) to Mavericks with bug fixes and perhaps the ability to block iMessages and FaceTime calls from certain users.

OS X Mavericks is on-track for release in the later half of October, and it will be available via the Mac App Store. Apple is yet to announce a release date or pricing information, but the company is holding an earnings conference call on October 28th. Historically, Apple has provided final release details for its new operating systems during the prepared remarks portions of these financial announcements.

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Comments

  1. kpom1 - 11 years ago

    Mac OS X Sonoma! (That’s where the good Syrah is from).

    • Romeo Sanuri - 11 years ago

      OSX Maverick is also called Cab (Which is Cabernet Sauvignon, another variety of wine). Good move as the number of different varietal of wine/grape is a lot compare to Cat names…

  2. Wow… 9to5mac has become something like a spy company — who is basically leaking internal company news and screenshots for its own eyeballs and money — regardless of whether breaking the news causing the company Apple harm or good. It obviously causes harm due to (a) surprise element is broken Apple actually releases the product (b) competitors know Apple’s roadmap and can pre-empt Apple with their own offerings.

    • Ian McCausland - 11 years ago

      Ah, yes. Right now Microsoft and Google are wringing their hands and saying: “Har har! Thanks to 9to5 Mac we now know that Apple intends to follow up OS X 10.9 with… A new version! Some time next year! Possibly named after a wine! We should pre-empt Apple by releasing an update to Chrome OS, calling it ‘Cheap Chardonnay’, or maybe we can even team up with Boones to have some kind of Chrome-branded wine!” Microsoft, too, is right now plotting to “pre-empt” Apple by calling Windows 9 “Foot Powered Wine Press”, featuring a new, innovative touchscreen user interface that you can only manipulate with your toes. Meanwhile, Mac owners everywhere, too, are hanging their heads in disappointment that the OS will be updated, that OS X 10.10 will eventually follow 10.9 some time next year, the surprise forever ruined because we never saw it coming. So blinded were we by elementary school mathematics, that we forgot that version numbers aren’t actually decimals.

      • Serjay Burlak - 11 years ago

        I couldn’t stop laughing reading your post man :) “innovative touchscreen user interface that you can only manipulate with your toes” …
        Serjan designer @ http://www.erickson.edu

      • James Alday - 11 years ago

        I’ve heard rumors that Microsoft is going in on a joint venture with Charles Shaw to produce a new operating system…

  3. Gary - 11 years ago

    All three could be considered wine:

    – Syrah
    – Cab, short for Cabernet Sauvignon
    – and Foxtrot is a winery ( http://www.foxtrotwine.com/ )

  4. Justin Witham (@jtw_111) - 11 years ago

    I really hope they don’t call it OS X 10.10…why not move on to Mac OS 11 (or XI) if it’s going to be a design overhaul?

  5. ctxppc - 11 years ago

    Erm… Please correct me if I’m wrong, but couldn’t anybody mislead the analysis by using a different user agent string (Developer—User Agent—Other…)? Something like “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS Ⅹ 10_10_0) AppleWebKit/537.71 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.1 Safari/537.71”? IP addresses could also be influenced to make it a more genuine 17.X.X.X.

    • bakeg - 11 years ago

      Just set mine to OSX 10.11, we’ll see if it makes headlines.

  6. Gabi Vicente - 11 years ago

    So, in math, what comes after 10.9? I would say 11. 10.10 was released in 2001 as “Mac OS X Puma”.
    You might want to correct that… :)

  7. Patrick Smit - 11 years ago

    Is 10.11 gonna be called beer???

  8. tony bateson - 11 years ago

    Os mountain lion also portioned the hard drive will Maverick create another partition or will it replace the mountain lion one
    Tony

  9. Ben Tinner - 11 years ago

    Where is that website in the image?

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