How Apple names things
nicolas.kruchten.com
nicolas.kruchten.com
There are a lot of things to also hate about apples naming schemes, just look at the pro, max, se nonsense they cooked up.
Also the naming scheme of Mac OS versions, i can never figure out which one came before or after the other, there is no rhyme or reason. Why dont they use alphabetical sorted names? Or years/numbers like Windows…?
Which isn’t always the case.
They do. Ventura is macOS 13. In fact, when they dropped OS X, they did a bit in the key note explaining that instead of it being OS X 10.16 Catalina, it would now now be macOS 11 Catalina.
See > About this Mac
The cat names were more memorable and spanned a longer time line instead of being yearly releases.
Idk, but it doesn’t matter. If you need to know which version came before or after just compare the version numbers instead. The human names are not meant for that.
I mean even when Apple uses sequential, numerical names you can't always answer the question of which came first: the iPhone 8 and iPhone X (10) were announced ~simultaneously! And there wasn't even a 9!
My point is it really doesn't matter which big cat or California landmark came first. It's trivial to find out if you want to, but it's not terribly important to encode that in the name you're using to identify your product.
But perhaps they should adopt a chicken-egg naming scheme.
You don't need to know that. It does not matter.
These human names are for marketing. They have no significance other than that.
When a vendor says "we are dropping support for MacOS High Sierra and earlier" then it does matter.
Does that include Big Sur? Catalina? Mavericks ? One has to go and look up the corresponding version numbers to determine that.
Here are some random examples taken from some of the software that I use on my systems.
JetBrains CLion system requirements:
> macOS 10.14 or later
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/clion/installation-guide.html
System requirements for using Slack
> MacOS OS X 10.15 or above
https://slack.com/help/articles/115002037526-System-requirem...
Davinci Resolve 18 Tech Specs
> Mac 10.15 Catalina or later.
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/tec...
Mac Compatibility with Live – Live 11 – Live Universal build
> Apple Silicon: macOS 11.6.6 Big Sur through macOS 13 Ventura
https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001261150-Mac-...
That's just like, your opinion.
Even operating systems that try to follow that idea are not fully able to do it.
For example, Ubuntu has been using alphabetically ordered names ever since version 5.10, which was released in October 2005.
But sooner or later they have to wrap. And they already did that once.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelopmentCodeNames
So now, for someone on the outside who tries to apply this idea that names should encode release order, we still can't tell, which of the following was released first:
- Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat
or
- Ubuntu Lunar Lobster
Well, if all we know about Ubuntu is that the names are alphabetically sorted then we might think that Lunar Lobster came before Maverick Meerkat. But Ubuntu Lunar Lobster is the upcoming version 23.04. Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat was version 10.10, released all the way back in October 2010.
And so my point is, if you want to compare version release dates. Just look at the version numbers.
It is not sensible to claim that somehow the names have to be in alphabetical order.
Do you use alphabetical order for the hostnames of your computers?
Do you name your children in alphabetical order?
Maybe you do. But not everyone will, and that's perfectly fine.
Frankly, that's not a problem. They have 26 letters to go through, so that's 13 years.
13 years is a geological age in computing. By that point the previous product has been deprecated for so long it's basically a museum piece and nobody can spot it in the wild.
Microsoft Windows XP was released to retail on October 25, 2001.
Extended support for Microsoft Windows XP ended on April 8, 2014.
~13 years after its release
Back then, in 2014, 13 years after its release, Windows XP still had a big market share according to for example this page from 2014 https://sourcedigit.com/6553-windows-xp-will-die-april-8-201...
Regardless. All I am saying is, there is no reason to try and insist that marketing name should encode version release date.
If you want to compare versions, use the version numbers and compare those. That's what the version numbers are for.
If you had more than 20 children, you would clearly want some logic in naming. People often apply that to twins for example.
Anyway, that applies better to "more than a few" groups; Ubuntu did well because they release many versions, and you really rarely need to check against versions from 13 years ago with that release speed. Microsoft didn't need it for Windows because they only had 4 or 5 versions in 20 years.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_operating_system...
The human names of the macOS versions are not meant for that purpose.
Every version of macOS also has a version number. If you need to ever know which version came before another you compare the version number.
I too find their naming conventions confusing. Apple TV is another example. It could refer to 3 different things depending on how it’s used. I have an Apple TV and an Apple TV subscription but I have no idea which is technically called what.
I also disagree with their casual use of the term “Pro” too. But at least that isn’t an Apple specific problem but rather endemic across the entire tech landscape.
The Microsoft example given by the GP isn’t great though. Microsoft are, in my personal opinion, even worse at naming things than Apple. But as someone who’s released a fair amount of open source, I do acknowledge that naming things is hard.
When people talk about Apple TV I’m never quite certain which product they’re referring to and have to infer that from the context of their sentence.
It does communicate something. But it's not for comparing release dates of versions.
It's for marketing.
Go to Apples website, navigate to the Mac section and then to the macOS section.
That lands you on this page: https://www.apple.com/macos/ventura/
The names are used in marketing when new versions are launched.
Read the page I linked about macOS Ventura. The way that they use the name of that version here is the way that they use the OS version names in general. For marketing, when a new version is released.
Your argument that the names are non-descriptive because they were intended to be non-descriptive doesn’t absolve the criticism that non-descriptive names are confusing to a lot of people.
As a personal pet peeve of mine, whenever a corporation chooses "One" for its marketing or branding it indicates an uncreative and unoffensive marketing team that can't think of anything more creative to convey a sense of product cohesion.
> Poseurs will call Windows versions by their programmatic version numbers. For example, they will call Windows Vista “NT6” and Windows 7 “NT6.1”. Trust me, nobody on the Windows team calls the products by their programmatic version numbers. Whenever anybody says “NT6” I have to go to Wikipedia and look up what they’re actually talking about. If I even care to bother, and usually I don’t.
[0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20130507-00/?p=44...
Apple names are fun! It's a nice thing!
The products themselves were/are great but their names are really bad.
"I phone" kind of works, but "I pod"? "I pad"? Really? :-)
I really dislike the pro/max/ultra qualifiers, but again it is all consistent.
Compare it with the discontinued “Galaxy Note.” Although it is not a tongue twister, it is two words, neither of which is unique to Samsung on its own. “Galaxy Tab” has the same issues.
Samsung’s product names are not bad. But “iPad” definitely has the advantage of pithiness and uniqueness.
Same with go fanboyism/hate.
Really, what is there to be joyful about here?
I can write a similar essay about how I like the strong capital letters of AMD, the beauty of not falling for the temptation of putting a lower-case "i" in front of it, etc., etc.
You could. And it might be an enjoyable read if you articulate it properly.
Is it so hard to just let someone complain about something? Everyone can have their own opinion, i don't know why some people want every single one to be positive.
For the purposes of enlightenment: Your comment is typical nerd stuff. You’re biased by your failure to understand how human communications and social interactions work.
Contrarian edgelords are obnoxious and tiring. There is no need to get involved in a conversation if the point is just to label someone an idiot fanboy. It is not even cynicism, which requires some degree of consciousness instead of a knee jerk reaction. So yeah, if your only argument is “I think the author is an idiot and I am so much better because I can see clearly what he ignores”, well, then kindly fuck off. Come back when you’re civilised enough to have a conversation instead of name calling.
vs
10.0, 10.1,...,10.15,11,12,13
Which you’re free to do, and could have done without insulting the author. The submitted post’s very first sentence is “I love the way Apple names things”. The author likes them. They’re sharing a opinion, at no point do they imply they’re the voice of reason or that you should agree with them.
What I see from their post is someone who made an effort to build and share something interesting which makes them happy.
What I see from your comment is instant tribalism, where one can’t even say they like an inconsequential naming scheme without being labelled a “typical fanboi”.
Can we do better? Let people enjoy what they want, they’re not harming anyone.
That is to be proven. Encouraging and advocating practices that are counterproductive can be harmful.
Maybe you just don't see how one company is shaping the entire market because a group of people (we can call them fanboys for the sake of argument) insists that their way of doing things is "the" way. Which it of course isn't and we see how that is ruining products that try to compete. See win11 as an example.
You don’t call someone a pejorative term “for the sake of argument”, you do it for the exact opposite. Insults are the antithesis of productive discussion.
> because a group of people (…) insists that their way of doing things is "the" way.
Which, again, is not what the author did. They didn’t claim Apple’s naming scheme was “the way”, they said they personally liked it. Period.
I missed this part in the tiny paragraph that says "I like these names"
Also, Apple adopted these practices long before they had significant market share in any market. Nobody has been “forced” to adopt them in order to compete.
Im sure you feel similarly about anything related to Elon Musk, right?
HN circle jerks are so prevalent it's nearly transparent.
Nothing bad about those names in utility. They designate 3 different models/spec levels, and they're infinitely better than all crap names DELL or SONY etc ever came up with ("NZ4X5-324DD" and such). As for aesthetics, they're short, easy to remember, and pleasurably sounding.
What's not to like? That "pro" ain't for "real" professionals gatekeeping BS, as if video editors and graphic designers are the only real professionals, and a CEO isn't pro enough...
>Also the naming scheme of Mac OS versions, i can never figure out which one came before or after the other, there is no rhyme or reason.
Aside the fact that they coming with an associated dead simple numeric version, they're out there for a year before the next one comes. You have like a year to learn and remember that Ventura is the latest and had one year to become familiar with Monterey before it was replaced (so it's quite easy to remember Ventura was next). Now, if you some reason you want to determine if some OS from 10-15 years ago like Snow Leopard came before or after Tiger, yeah, that would be more difficult (also more pointless).
Heck, im still on catalina, imho the last “good” macos version (but thats another discussion).
Anyway, its just that everytime a macos version is mentioned i have to look up the sequence, because i just cant remember it.
One reason is probably also that macos has much more frequent updates (than windows for example) and thats why i cant remember them.
Also you say its hard to sequence the older macos releases, that is true! but i can perfectly sequence the old windows releases. Why? Maybe i used them more? Anyway its still interesting.
In the end it wouldnt be hard for them to use a more helpful, user friendly, naming scheme
Functionally as in categories of what they do.
Example:
Oscalc. O: Office; S: Spreadsheet; Calc: Name of application.
There's no reason to stick to only one name, Oscalc in English could be XyCalc in another language.
And no reason why something with many functionalities could not be in more than one place, PvVLC could be ArVLC too plus deep linked to the recording function when called as such.
Then we could, name things how we liked, know what they do and where they are instantly, and get using them for what we want to do even faster.
What does the "Pv" in this even mean? "Playback video"? That does not line up with your other examples. Is the first letter a verb or a noun? What about the second letter? You see how this proposal falls apart once you look at it for more than a second?
AppleTV is a set-top box. AppleTV is an app that you can install on your AppleTV. AppleTV+ is a streaming service, which is also an app on AppleTV, but different from AppleTV. AppleTV is an Operating System for old AppleTV hardware.
Safari.
Like Explorer, Navigator before it, it invokes adventure and exploration. It doesn't mean anything per se in technical terms. It is however, a product.
In Windows Disk Management was hidden away and searching for it would return a nebulous list with long winded descriptions but never name Disk Management forcing me to carefully read each result. For search to actually return Disk Management (or any utility for that matter) you have to type the entire name.
In OS X (and now in MacOS but with far fewer utilities these days) apps like Disk Utility have a personality and are easily searched for. Typing ‘du’ in Spotlight is all you need. Windows 10 fixes a lot of this with Super X (or right clicking on Start) but it still lacks that personality.
MacOS is losing a lot of its personality these days unfortunately. In a hurry I often confuse the app icons for Finder, Safari and Mail because they’re all similar white and blue squares.
I also love how the name Finder throws shade at Explorer.
Go -> A programming language created by Google
Google Go -> An android app to help you search
Android Go -> A lightweight version of Android created by Google.
https://www.swyx.io/how-to-name-things
this piece would be a new category for me - how to name products, given a big brand that covers multiple products
On the one hand, Apple deserves credit for creating an experience where the tool seems to get out of the way.
On the other, it's depressing that so many users are steered away from understanding things that could increase their facility with these devices they rely on so much.
Ah, yes. The reason MS Edge had to start with an E so the icon could still be an e.
In this visualization, I was immediately able to pick out clusters around "i", "Apple", "touch" and so on .. and the interactivity helps me to quickly filter and explore. So, I think that for an exploratory tasks, a force-directed graph helps.
My main gripe with Apple is their decision to not version product names well, e.g. "The New iPad". This is fine for tech-savvy users who will read the specs and know what they're getting, but from what I've seen almost universally confuses less tech-savvy customers and leaves them at the whim of salespeople. Apple doesn't need to use model codes or numbers, but should have something that clearly defines new vs. old. They have relented a bit and now have "10th generation" add-ons on official messaging after years of hiding it, which just seems to be like one-button stubbornness where they won't concede the obvious.
I agree, "Play" is very generic. But I thought the name "Play Store" had become ubiquitous among Android users, even non-tech-savvy ones.
I'll always remember how weird that decision became just 12 months later.
You went from something that was understood to something that even tech savvy people have to Google to figure out which version their parents have and why Facetime group calls silently fail for them.
Some extremes: Soundtrack, Afterburner, Aperture, Cocoa, Exposé, etc.
'App Store', 'Multi-Touch', 'FaceID', and others that Apple claims though are definitely questionable IMO. When you have to jump through linguistic hoops to describe your product because someone's trademarked the obvious descriptive language, there's a problem. I don't know either. I guess, considering how the legal system generally works in the US, that someone would have to legally challenge their validity, and nobody wants to go against Apple in court.
To be fair I'd say most of the trademarks they claim are pretty reasonable, though: https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/...
Edit: Did a bit of looking into the App Store trademark and it looks like both Amazon and Microsoft did challenge this, but both settled out of court with unknown terms, and the trademark stands as a result.
This is a great example of how the USA legal system is broken.
The responsibility for preventing bad trademarks from being registered should not lie with other gigantic companies, which have as much incentive to collude as to compete.
Now the public suffers because the bad trademark stands, and the people who are likely to be harmed by trademark trolling (smaller companies that do not have the money to fight Apple's questionable trademark) remain at risk of harm, potentially indefinitely, because trademarks don't expire under US law.
If the case went through the full court system, then at least the outcome would be decided in the public eye and could be said to have been fairly evaluated and decided. A settlement is as if the case never happened at all!
I interpret this change as communicating 'iPhone is a system whose benefits are predicated on the hardware being omnipresent.'
When you're on vacation and a stranger offers to take your photo and they can just airdrop it to you? When you can retrieve lost keys with an AirTag? When you put that fun sticker on an iMessage? That's not 'an iPhone', it's 'iPhone' and it's what a lot of people are really paying for these days, I think.
Jobs presented "iPhone" and article-less was dominant in all company messaging for the product.
iPod, iMac, iPhone, iPad ... Apple Watch?
Feels like somewhere along the line they decided that naming all their products something with the letter 'i' was silly and dropped it.
That's my theory anyway. Probably wrong lol.
Fashion aware people are mostly wearing traditional watches or go for colorful oversized G-Shocks if they're some celebrity looking to make a bold statement or something.
I recommend 'The Urban Gentry' on Youtube.
But Apple is not necessarily selling to watch aficionados, they are selling (partly) to people who want to be seen as fashionable in a general sense. Calling it "Apple Watch" instead of iWatch, and putting it next to Hermès straps is about adding that gleam of luxury and glamour.
That's funny. I'm not deep into the celebrity/fashion cult, but whenever I see interviews with various celebrities, actors, business people, fashion people, athletes, etc, they always wear some sort of Swiss/Japanese mechanical watch with their fashionable formal or casual attire, never an Apple watch.
Who is considering it a luxury brand? Maybe teenagers on the school playground, or in developing nations where a iWatch costs over a month's average wage (I'm from a developing nation).
But in the west (US, Sweden, etc) it's far from being a luxury brand of any kind. It's just a gadget/tech brand making stuff that almost anyone there can afford. Hardly comparable to something like LVMH.
With the exception of the iMac, there's also only Mac computers. Really there's only the iMac, iPad and iPhone left with the i prefix.
My guess - the 'I' prefix was tied to the Digital Hub initiative, where software and devices would tie in via your home computer to share music, home movies, photos, etc.
When it became clear that the cloud would replace having all of that maintained on a home computer for most people, adding 'i' as a prefix ended - with iCloud.
For example, they were going to use rOS and now it's rumored to be xrOS [1] for technical/branding/market reasons that are evolving behind a curtain.
Also, its a little meta, but I am a big fan of visualizations and this link is itself an example of one that would work well in XR !
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2022/12/01/apple-headset-operating...
Guessing they think of a consumer hasn’t likely heard of it it won’t be confusing.
I didn't understand some connections, e.g.: book & apple; or mac & tcp and I had to check against the provided list of trademarks[1].
[1]: https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/...
After a while these large numbers feel like minors on a software patch and not big leaps that drive sales from average consumers.