Naturally, when Apple released the OS X beta, I jumped on it and installed it and cursed the fact that it was a) slow, b) buggy as hell and c) blissfully unfettered by third-party software. But it was beautiful and lovely and Aqua-licious.
Today Apple announced that “OS X” is being renamed, and will henceforth be known simply as “macOS.” It makes sense, given the growing convergence of their desktop and mobile operating systems. And the original meaning (version 10 of the operating system) has long been lost with a decade and a half of updates.
But I’ll miss that X. It was an oddly reassuring sight on my screen during upgrades, promising me that, despite all the disk churning and sluggish progress-bar advancing, everything really would all be okay.