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It sounds like Apple is going to rebrand the Mac operating system soon

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The iMac. Skye Gould/Tech Insider

Expect Apple to rebrand its desktop operating system OS X as "macOS" or "MacOS" in the near future.

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The change, probably in the next version of the operating system, would bring Apple's desktop brand in line with its other products. So far, Apple has released iOS for its iPhones and iPads, tvOS for Apple TVs, and watchOS for the Apple Watch.

Romain Dillet of TechCrunch pointed out that Apple exec Phil Schiller hinted at the change on a podcast last year. One Apple configuration file was also found to contain a reference to macOS.

Will this mean a big change to the way you use your operating system? Probably not, but it hints at the company moving toward a larger trend pushed by Microsoft: Desktop operating systems as evolving services and platforms, not iterated products. Microsoft has called Windows 10 "the last version of Windows," meaning that it will continue to tweak it for years rather than sell a Windows 11 in 2017 or 2018.

Similarly, when Apple releases a new iOS you don't go out and buy it — it just pushes right to your smartphone. The current OS X already works that way too, with free updates to most Macs every year. But the "macOS" branding would put everything in line with the rest of Apple's software.

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Apple typically announces a new version of its Mac operating system every June during its annual developers conference.

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