Traffic from Apple's unannounced OS X 10.9 continues to grow

The presence of Macs running OS X 10.9, Apple's next-generation operating system, continues to expand, potentially hinting that a public unveiling could occur soon.

It was on February 16 of last year that Apple, for the first time, announced OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Now, nearly a year later, there is evidence that the company is hard at work testing the next version of its Mac operating system.

Traffic logs for AppleInsider show that visits from machines claiming to be running an unannounced OS X 10.9 spiked in the month of January.

But while October visits from OS X 10.9 were around three dozen total, the number swelled into the thousands in the just-concluded month of January.Evidence of Apple testing OS X 10.9 first surfaced late last year, when AppleInsider tracked a handful of visits from machines running the next-generation operating system in the month of October. But while October visits from OS X 10.9 were around three dozen total, the number swelled into the thousands in the just-concluded month of January.

For the last couple of years, Apple has been upgrading OS X on an annual basis. Last year, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion launched on the Mac App Store in July, while OS X 10.7 Lion launched in July of 2011.

If Apple keeps to the same schedule this year, the company could formally unveil OS X 10.9 in the coming weeks, giving developers time to prepare for a summer 2013 launch of its next Mac operating system.