Mac OS X 10.7 Rumors Start

For all you Mac savvy VARs out there, here’s something you should know. Mac OS X 10.7 has been showing up in weblogs. Does this mean Apple intends to release it soon? And what’s the big-cat code name going to be? Here’s the speculation:

MacRumors.com, who go out of their way to be incredibly reliable, have seen a spike in their web logs (as have other rumors sites for Apple) featuring Mac OS X 10.7. It’s an interesting development since Apple has just seeded 10.6.3 to developers.

And before the spoof-alarm goes off in your head, in December, the majority of these hits were coming internally from Apple owned IP addresses. The reason MacRumors reported on this was because January saw a spike of 200 users with 10.7. There’s whispers around the ‘net that Apple intends to introduce 10.7 to devs come WWDC 2010, but that’s still a huge conjecture, especially when dealing with Apple.

There’s no word on what this elusive OS’s cat name will be, but some have fun calling it “Lion.” Others find “Lynx” more sexy, along with “Cougar.” Some more clunky variants are offering “Sabertooth” or “Ocelot,” but of course, it’s all speculation. The biggest evidence points to the fact that Apple hasn’t actually picked a code-name yet, so it’ll be interesting to see what they choose.

Apple has a habit of releasing OSes in a “tick-tock” fashion. 10.3 Panther was  the ‘tick’ and a solidification of the UI and Apple “Aqua” theme. Panther was arguably the first widely usable version of OS X and the one most people because familiar with on ‘new age’ Macs. Tiger, offered the ‘tock,’ with the introduction of the Dashboard, Spotlight, kernel stability, and a few other goodies (including the Intel build). Leopard was a huge ‘tick’ up the chart, with a UI redesign and a bucket of new features, including “Spaces.” Snow Leopard was the “tock” offering a few tweaks, but more rock-solid performance under the hood. So, then, what’s in store for 10.7, the proposed “tick” ?

The last bit of information is that 10.7 most likely will introduce a huge user-interface redesign, the rumored ‘marble’ interface that didn’t make it in Leopard or Snow Leopard. We already see hints of it, though, with the black / glass and silver design in both the Macs and the UI of OS X. Likely, it’ll be the eradication of all things “Aqua” and blue.

So with January 27th 2010, turning out to be Tablet Launch, do you think we’ll see a hint of 10.7 in the Tablet? We’ll have to wait and see.