Which company develops macOS?

Apple develops macOS, the operating system used on the company’s Mac computers.

macOS is Apple’s proprietary Unix-based desktop operating system. It evolved from technology Apple acquired when it purchased NeXT in 1997, including the NeXTSTEP operating system and the foundations that became Darwin and the XNU kernel. The first public desktop release of this modern lineage, Mac OS X 10.0, arrived in 2001.

The name changed over time: Apple used Mac OS X until 2012, OS X from 2012 through 2016, and macOS beginning with Sierra in 2016. Apple develops the core system, designs its user experience, maintains the security model, and ships major annual updates alongside its Mac hardware.

NeXT is a common historical mix-up because NeXT technology forms part of macOS’s ancestry, but NeXT did not develop the modern Mac operating system as a current product. Likewise, Microsoft develops Windows, not macOS. Apple also develops related operating systems, including iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS, many of which share technologies with macOS.