@paul I wonder, historically, at what point does each platform pass 50% on the current version? Might it be December/January? (also, if they did current year, I bet everyone would complain about '25 coming out so late).

@paul No, or people will wonder why their OS is old on Jan 1. Pre-dating the OS’s allows a lot of leeway in when you release the next version.

@paul Maybe it’s more accurately targeting x.4 release in May when they actually manage to ship almost everything they showed off at WWDC.

@paul September major release does present that problem, doesn’t it? They could be numbered like the old Mac OS X security releases: “2025-05 macOS release…”. That would minimize the branding impact, though, which likely makes it a non-starter.

@paul I agree with a friend who said that the year should be based on the year that the product spends most of its life in, so that is the subsequent year.

@paul Yup. It makes more sense to keep them in sync, expectedly since they’re released yearly

@paul I was hoping for Lunar year. iOS Year of the Snake ...

@paul With a work flow geared towards seasonal sales and quarterly earnings? Should a fall or winter release have the next year, a spring or summer release the previous