macadmin.fraserhess.com

In 2014, MacRumors and Consomac uncovered trademarks that pointed to future marketing names of macOS releases. With one exception, macOS Catalina 10.15¹, the list of trademarks they found has contained every macOS name to date.

Here is the list, reordered by release and then alphabetically, complete with links to what they might be named after:

• Yosemite – OS X 10.10
• El Cap – OS X 10.11
• Sierra – macOS 10.12 (Also the basis of macOS 10.13)
• Mojave – macOS 10.14
• Big Sur – macOS 11
• Monterey – macOS 12
• Ventura – macOS 13
• Sonoma – macOS 14
• California
• Condor
• Diablo
• Farallon
• Grizzly
• Mammoth
• Miramar
• Pacific
• Redtail
• Redwood
• Rincon
• Sequoia
• Skyline²
• Shasta
• Tiburon

That leaves 15 names still unused. If I were picking names for macOS, I’d use California as a capstone to all the other California names. I’d only use Mammoth and Sequoia for large feature releases, and I’d never use Shasta, because that mountain is also associated with a second-rate cola.

The headlining screensaver and desktop feature in macOS Sonoma calls for beautiful drone footage of the namesake place, so I’d pick Condor, Diablo, Farallon, Pacific, Redwood, Rincon, or possibly Tiburon. Skyline is a wildcard—would it be named after city skylines or something else? Even named for cities, Apple really loves to put cityscapes in the Aerial screensaver.

Just 5 months until we find out the answer.

1. Does this mean that the similarity in the macOS Catalina and Mac Catalyst names wasn’t a coincidence? ↩︎
2. If anyone has a solid guess on what Skyline could be named after, besides city skylines, post a comment. Skyline Wilderness Park, perhaps? ↩︎