Apple Has Already Begun Development Of Mac OS X 10.8

Apple has already started work on the version 10.8 of Mac OS X. Just in July the company launched the version 10.7 of OS X Lion, which included many new features and was the first Mac OS X version to be sold through the Mac App Store.

Apple has not yet announced its plans for the next major revision of OS X, but testers of Mac OS 10.8 from Apple’s HQ and area surrounding Silicon Valley was first spotted by web logs on some sites in August and since then frequency of their visits have gradually increased.

The similar pattern of visits was observed for early OS X 10.7 testing beginning in October 2009. It should be noted that the first appearance of 10.7 was a year before the first release of the version for developers and almost a two year before its public release.

Historically, Apple released new major updates of OS X every other year, so we might expect Apple to release developer preview of OS X sometime in 2012 and version to the public in 2013.

It is also interesting what Apple is going to call the next OS X version. Apple has been called the major OS X releases after cat family animals such as Lion and Leopard, and it naturally seems that Lion is the final name in this line. Previously Apple had trademarked the names "Cougar" and "Lynx", but later the company abandoned trademarks on these names. However, the name "Lion" has been trademarked only after the public announcement of the version, so Apple will still have the wide choice of names for its next OS X version.