soreEyes (and where are my System 7 ports?)

[Ryan Schmidt]

> On Sep 27, 2016, at 2:54 AM, René J.V. Bertin <rjvbertin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I just caught something from the corner of my eye which put me in rant mode:
> 
>> MacPorts <https://www.macports.org/>
>> Ports system for macOS
> 
> Am I the only one who gets sore eyes because of Apple's latest name change for their OS? It's one thing seeing camelToe (...) case being used for variables and functions, using it in a brand name for a system that aims so much to hide its technicity is IMHO just as inappropriate as personifying devices by omitting the (in)definite article when they are mentioned.
> 
> Let's just say I find it ugly, and that Mac OS without "X" evokes, well, the days of an OS held together with hairpins and prehistoriX zip-ties, MacBugs and A9F4. And I can hardly imagine that I'm the only one among the not-so-young-if-not-more-mature users who have that kind of association.
> 
> I'll keep calling any Darwin version before 16 "Mac OS X" as long as "About this Mac" continues to identify the system that way.
> 
> Anyway, this is indeed mostly a rant, but couldn't we come up with a somewhat more agnostic and less (out-of-)fashionable MacPorts description?
> 
> Something like
> 
> "Ports system for the Mac and its OS"
> 
> or what I'd prefer because that's what it's all about:
> 
> "Ports system for Mac users"

The official word from Apple is that it is called "Mac OS" before 10.0, "Mac OS X" from 10.0 to 10.7, "OS X" from 10.7 to 10.11, "macOS" from 10.12 onwards, and "the Mac operating system" when not specifying a version. Whether we like Apple's OS names or not, it's less confusing to users if we use the same terminology Apple does.

I have fond memories of System 6 and 7. You can enjoy them again by running "sudo port install minivmac-devel" and visiting http://www.gryphel.com/c/sw/index.html