Signs point to Apple abandoning OS X branding in favor of “MacOS” [Updated]

Update: The page has been tweaked to read "OS X" for now, though further evidence for a transition to "MacOS" still exists.

Original story: iOS, watchOS, tvOS, OS X. One of these things is not like the others, but it may not be that way for long. Today Apple launched a landing page detailing some of its environmental initiatives—an interesting read in its own right that builds upon some of what the company talked up at the iPhone SE event last month—and attentive readers will note that the page refers to the Mac's operating system not as OS X, but as "MacOS." This, along with a reference to "MacOS" buried in OS X 10.11.4 that was noticed by the Brazilian site MacMagazine a couple of weeks back, suggests that Apple is planning a change to its Mac operating system's branding for the first time in quite a while.

Apple's Mac operating system has gone through twelve major revisions and countless minor updates since the first OS X developer betas came to light in 1999, but for the better part of two decades the operating system has always been called "Mac OS X" or just "OS X." This may be Apple's opportunity to ditch that "ten" branding, modernizing it and bringing it in line with the rest of Apple's software platforms without necessarily declaring any particular update worthy of bumping the version number up to eleven.

Of course, nothing is certain until we get our first look at Apple's new operating systems at WWDC in June. But a branding change would make sense, especially if Apple took some time out of its opening day presentation to shine a light on the kind-of-neglected-looking Mac lineup (Macs and OS X were barely mentioned at all at the event in March or the iPhone 6S event last September).