Apple dropped a big hint that OS X will soon become ‘MacOS’

As if we weren’t expecting it already, there’s a huge new clue Apple is about to rename OS X to MacOS.

In discussing how it concluded product life spans for an Earth Day promotion, Apple writes “years of use, which are based on first owners, are assumed to be four years for MacOS and tvOS devices and three years for iOS and watchOS devices” as determining factors.

It’s not a total surprise; we actually expected Apple to announce this change at last year’s WWDC developers conference. It’s also been subtly altering its ‘iStuff’ naming scheme since introducing watchOS and tvOS.

Oddly, the ‘Mac’ in MacOS is capped-up, which would be a subtle but notable difference from its other platforms.

If Apple does make the change, we’ll expect ‘phoneOS’ to be rumored shortly afterward, and possibly arrive sometime in 2017.