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Comment by Xuzz | Hacker News Reader

Although the HN title (currently) says "Ipad 3", Apple seems to actually be calling it the new "iPad" (edit: "new iPad", not "New iPad"). It's a bit confusing: next year, is it then the "old iPad"?

But, we don't really have that issue with many other Apple products (iPod nano, all Macs, etc) that use the same naming scheme. So we'll see how bad it actually ends up.

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I think it's just called the iPad. Right now it's new, so they're referring to it as the "new iPad".

This naming convention is simpler that appending a hardware version number to the name at each refresh. Also, it's what Apple currently does with most of their other product lines. It's the MacBook Pro, not the MacBook Pro 3. The iPods were always called just that, an iPod. People referred to them as the nth generation iPod, but Apple labeled them iPods. Easy.

I wouldn't be surprised if this naming convention spreads the iPhone.

Macbooks are versioned. The versions people refer to are 'mid 2007', 'late 2008', etc.

iPods are also versioned. People refer to their '4G iPod shuffle' or their '2G iPod touch'

Right, customers call them that, but Apple calls their products iPods and MacBooks when they are selling them. The names are simply "iPod", etc. The hardware revision number is only used when need to disambiguate.

But that's not the actual product name, as used by Apple publicly.

Er...

http://support.apple.com/manuals/#macbook

And as another example: http://support.apple.com/manuals/#ipodnano

>I wouldn't be surprised if this naming convention spreads the iPhone.

This naming convention would be especially convenient for the iPhone. The next one would be the sixth generation but it could confuse people if they call it 'iPhone 6' since there was never an iPhone with a '5' in its name.

For reference, here are the previous iPhone names:

1. iPhone

2. iPhone 3G

3. iPhone 3GS

4. iPhone 4

5. iPhone 4S

I think this is one way Apple brings their marketing in line with how average consumers think. Most non-gadget people don't know the difference between the iPhone 4, 4S, and 3GS , other than price. They assume the more expensive one is better and does more stuff. But model numbers (even if it's just a single number) are not the way most consumers think.

Similarly, the iPhone 4S simply says "iPhone" on the back and is not easily differentiated from the original iPhone 4.

I'm not sure , sticking numbers after something is a fairly universal thing. Movies, video games and most software has been doing this for a while.

The farther away from this Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch nonsense, the happier I'll be.

I think the reason people misattribute Apple's success to marketing is because everyone else's marketing is just godawful.

And no, I didn't make that name up.

I can believe it , most laptops have names that are pretty much impossible to remember which in turn makes it very difficult to recommend a specific model to anybody not to mention uninspiring.

Not only that, looking at the HP order page, there doesn't seem to be much difference between them all.

Not that recommending a "15 inch Macbook Pro 2.4 GHz with a 2.5 GHz CPU, a 256GB Solid State Drive, and the Hi-Res Antiglare Widescreen Display" is particularly straightforward or inspiring.

At least I know what that is. Ever try to dig up the tech specs of a discontinued 90s-era laptop from just its model number?

Apple has unique model number codes for all their products, but they try very hard to hide it in the logistics department. It's not listed anywhere on their online store, for instance, and in Apple Support documents they always use a consistent date system, e.g. "late 2011 Macbook Pro."

Also, you could have shortened that to: 15" MacBook Pro with the best CPU, 256GB SSD, and antiglare screen. 66 characters vs. 118. ;)

Ha! I used the same example in an earlier thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3631578

Yes it is, but people only understand model numbers if it's something they take a deep interest in. I'm into smart phones and computers so I know how the naming conventions work. But, I don't know or care about the naming conventions for things like TV's, sports stats, cars, etc. Example; I've been looking for a new car recently and I find the model naming conventions confusing. I just want 6 seats, reliability, reasonable overtaking performance, reasonable fuel economy. I don't give a crap about most of the other stuff and I'm annoyed at having to learn it all so I can chose which car to buy.

I bet they were pissed after people were disappointed that they only got an iPhone 4S and no iPhone 5. Plus at some point you have to stop numbering. iPhone 23 doesn’t sound very appealing.

When you check out, it's referred to as iPad (3rd generation).

It looks like they're just calling it "iPad" now on their website. It's an interesting idea; maybe they plan on always calling the current one "iPad", and renaming the old model something like "iPad 2012" once the 2013 "iPad" is released.

They don't say 'MacBook Air 4', just 'MacBook Air'. I think this is to unify that naming scheme.

As people have pointed out, this is essentially how things like MacBooks work. I happen to know I have a “mid-2010” MacBook, but that isn’t printed on it anywhere and the average user would never know. It’s not a MacBook 7S or whatever.

The lack of a numbering scheme is a royal pain in the ass when googling bugs or trying to find pretty much any information about a specific model.

Although admittedly we already have that with most of their other devices ("do i have an early 2011 MB or was it the mid-2010?") and it's not like other vendors are much better in this regard.

I guess it helps that the iPad is on a yearly release schedule, as opposed to their Mac products.

There is a model identifier, it's just hidden in the system profiler (Mid 2011 air is MacBookAir4,2)

I also think that the naming convention is gonna stick for a while.

It's what they've always done. The "iPad 2" was always officially just called the "iPad" as well. My friend won one in a raffle, and we scoured the box looking at whether it was the new "iPad 2" or not. It never mentioned the "2" anywhere, but we eventually realized from the device's shape that it was the 2.

Apples call it the "iPad 2" on their online store.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad

(look at the bottom of the page)

I wonder if this will reduce complaints about "planned obsolescence".

When you check out, it's labeled "iPad (3d generation)".

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