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Comment by hnlmorg | Hacker News Reader

Why even have a version name then if it’s not intended to communicate anything?

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.

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> Why even have a version name then if it’s not intended to communicate anything?

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.

But plenty of products manage to have a version name that is both used for marketing and also conveys contextual informal about the release. Which is the point all the other commenters have been making.

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.

AOL did a great job with those CDs. There was AOL 4.0,5.0,6.0... all free for 30 days or 500,000 hours, whichever comes first.

The subscrption is called Apple TV+.

Which is confusing. Why have a hardware product and a streaming service named identically aside the addition of a non-alphabetically symbol.

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.

Such as "I like my Apple TV" probably implies the hardware box whereas "I like Apple TV" means the streaming service.

Except Apple loves to drop the articles when describing their hardware. E.g. "With iPhone, you can do X, Y, and Z!". So "I like Apple TV" could easily be referring to the hardware box in Applespeak.

but normal people don't, hence this never being an issue

Don't forgot the app! Use the Apple TV app to watch Apple TV+ on your Apple TV!

Isn’t the app just called “TV”? It kind of makes sense if it’s purpose is to show television programs.

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