Rumors about Apple's possible rebranding of its operating system for the Mac suddenly found traction this week after internet users noticed that the term "OS X" on the company's FAQ webpage had been replaced with "MacOS."
The change was included in a recent update of Apple's Environment subsite, under a section where the company discusses its assessment for "Product Greenhouse Gas Life Cycle." It is the only instance where the "MacOS" was mentioned as other parts of Apple's website still use "OS X" to refer to its flagship operating system.
However, as of the writing of this article, Apple appears to have removed the term "MacOS" from its webpage and gone back to using "OS X."
In March, a software developer working on the OS X 10.11.4 discovered a hidden framework in the operating system that included "MacOS" in its coding. Guilherme Rambo reportedly spotted the term in a private framework known as "FlightUtilities". He said that the feature is used to track flights but it is not included in the ones used for the El Capitan OS.
The framework is located at "/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/FlightUtilities.framework." This was verified by tech website MacMagazine, which also speculated that the new Apple operating system would be referred to as "macOS 11" and not OS X 10.12.
Rambo said he was able to use the program to develop a sample application. He believes that more information about the hidden OS X framework and the planned rebranding to "MacOS" could be revealed when Apple debuts its next-generation operating system for the Mac, which is expected to take place at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
Apple had used the term "MacOS" in the past to refer to earlier versions of the Mac operating system. Computers sold by the company carried the "Mac OS" up until 2012 when Apple decided to remove the word "Mac" from the branding for its operating system and simplified it into "OS X."
