Apple’s crack marketing team comes up with the name “macOS Tahoe” for macOS 26

Are you ready for macOS Tahoe? That’s supposedly the official marketing term Apple’s picked for macOS 26, the next major update to the Mac operating system.

Mark Gurman wrote in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg that Apple will brand macOS 26 as “macOS Tahoe,” continuing to reference California landmarks in macOS product names. Apple should also rename its operating system around year-based numbering, so we will be getting macOS 26 this fall instead of macOS 16.

macOS Tahoe should ship with one or more wallpapers that will highlight the beauty of the scenic Lake Tahoe and Apple’s rumored glassy design overhaul.

Who’s ready for macOS 26 Tahoe?

“Now we’re getting the third significant macOS redesign in the California naming era, and Apple is again looking for something special.” Gurman wrote. “I’m told that the company has homed in on Lake Tahoe as its next moniker, making it macOS Tahoe.”

“It’s a famous resort area and a vacation destination (and second-home site) for many Apple employees,” he added. “The deep blue lake is also known to show the reflection of the sky and surrounding mountains — something that flicks at the striking visuals of the new user interface.”

Gurman reported earlier that iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS 26 will bring a Vision Pro-inspired overhaul of the user interfaces across the iPhone, iPad and Mac, to simplify the way users navigate and control their devices. He later added that the redesign will also include the Apple TV and Apple Watch operating systems. The project allegedly marks Apple’s “biggest-ever software rebranding.”

Apple’s crack product marketing team

Apple entrusts software branding to a mysterious group, Apple’s vice president of software engineering chief Craig Federighi joked when he first mentioned Apple’s “crack product marketing team” at the WWDC 2013.

Federighi would go on to mention this team occasionally in future WWDCs. In 2014, for example, he joked that the group had embarked on a minibus journey through California’s landmarks to find an an inspiration for the marketing name of the next macOS update, with “OS X Weed” among the proposals.

In 2017, Apple dispatched the team in their minibus in search of a name for macOS 10.13. They eventually settled on “macOS High Sierra” (another weed reference) with Federighi joking that they “assured us this name is fully baked.”