What's the proper way to pronounce “Mac OS X”?

Question

I was inspired by the question Mac or Macintosh.

What's the proper way to pronounce "Mac OS X"? I've heard the following things used to refer to the operating system on the Macintosh:

• "Mac OS Ten" ("OS" is said like "AHSS")
• "Mac OS Ex" ("OS" is said like "AHSS")
• "Mac Oh-Ess Ex"
• "Mac Oh-Ess Ten"
• "Darwin" (People use this to refer to the operating system. Is this correct?)

Answer 1

According to Apple

The current version of Mac OS is Mac OS X (pronounced "Mac O-S ten"). ... . Major releases of Mac OS X include versions 10.0, 10.3, and 10.4. There are also updates (sometimes called "dot" releases) for each major release, such as versions 10.2.8 and 10.4.2.

This does present a problem because it isn't correct to write Mac OS X.6. All references to Mac OS X 10.6, are easier to pronounce as "Oh Ess [Ex] ten dot/point six," rather than saying, "ten," twice.

As for Darwin,

The Darwin layer of Mac OS X comprises the kernel, drivers, and BSD portions of the system [...]. Mac OS X extends this low-level environment with several core infrastructure technologies that make it easier for you to develop software.

Apple purchased NeXT for their XNU kernel, which is a hybrid kernel forked from CMU's Mach microkernel. BSD is an implementation of Unix originally released through UC Berkley. Aqua is the rendering engine for the user interface. The Apple Finder is a system application that always runs for user access to files and the desktop. OS X is the sum of these and other parts.

Answer 2

Try typing

say Mac OS X

in Terminal. You'll hear what Apple thinks about it.

Hint: It's "mac oh es ten"

Answer 3

starting with mountain lion it's no longer "mac os x" it will be just "OS X" pronounced o s ten.

Answer 4

From: http://support.apple.com/kb/TA22541

The current version of Mac OS is Mac OS X (pronounced "Mac O-S ten")

Answer 5

Mac Oh-Ess Ten

"Darwin" (People use this to refer to the operating system. Is this correct?)

Only partially. Darwin is the open-source unix-derived foundation of the operating system upon which GUI-goodness, frameworks, application environments, core services and other proprietary bells and whistles are laid.

Answer 6

They call it Macaussexx on the Dev Show (it's a joke though).

Answer 7

I know what it's supposed to be, but every time I speak it, it comes out of my mouth like "Mac Oh-Ess Ecks".

Answer 8

Part of me asks "How is this even a real question or up for debate*?", but of course the confusion was set in prior versions of Mac OS 8 and 9 have one obvious pronunciation.

The way that Apple Employees pronounce (and nearly all Mac fans agree) is that the X represents 10 exclusively and should not be spoken or expanded into the letter "X"

Mac Oh Es Ten

* That were actually labelled as Mac OS 8 & 9 and not as Mac OS IX & Mac OS XIII. Perhaps that is one reason there is a debate. Also, the infrequent use of Roman numbers in applications apart from clock faces. Perhaps the Mac OS X brand was in reference to the X "hipness" of Next and Unix as Apple replaced their previous OS architecture with one based on Next/Unix heritage.

Answer 9

When I was a kid developer, we were still using latin numerals so it wasn't hard to see OS 9 moving aside for OS X pronounced "Ten" but with a latin numeral "X" to honor the new Unix core.