Version history of macOS

list the most recent macOS updates, the features they introduced, and their security controls. versions 10.5 - 10.8 were covered in J. Levin’s first version of the 1st book versions 10.0 - 10.4 were covered in Amit Singh’s book.

Most of this information comes from Jonathan Levin’s books on OS internals, and Apple’s Developer resources.

Table of Contents

TODO change links

  1. Darwin, Unix, and POSIX
  2. 10.9 Mavericks
  3. 10.10 Yosemite
  4. 10.11 El Capitan
  5. 10.12 Sierra

Versioning arithmetic

All of this and OSS

Apple finds a way to keep the more important modifications closed (such as support for the ARMv7/v8 platforms), as well as conditional #ifdef blocks for CONFIG_EMBEDDED which have been removed from the public sources as of XNU 2422.

Conditional #ifdef CONFIG_EMBEDDED blocks encapsulate platform-specific kernel code and drivers essential for auditing embedded macOS/iOS security, but they’re often stripped from public XNU 2422 sources to avoid exposing proprietary or sensitive implementation details.

![[mac-oss-components.png]]

Timeline of Macintosh operating systems

![[mac-timeline.png]]

In Apple’s ecosystem, “*OS” is the suffix used in naming their operating systems—examples include iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

Table of contents