How Apple names things

This reads like some typical fanboi stuff.<p>There are a lot of things to also hate about apples naming schemes, just look at the pro, max, se nonsense they cooked up.<p>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&#x2F;numbers like Windows…?

Wow, I disagree strongly with this one. It&#x27;s so frustrating that I have to describe a feature to a search engine to find out what it&#x27;s called, just so I can find it in the Settings (sorry, I mean System Preferences) panel. Continuity, Stage Manager, Exposé, Spotlight, Launchpad, Mission Control. These names don&#x27;t mean anything, and aren&#x27;t helpful. They&#x27;re features, not products, yet they are named like products and you just have to be tapped into the marketing language Apple uses in order to know what&#x27;s what.

One of the nice things I liked about OS X when I moved from Windows&#x2F;Ubuntu around 2010 was the clear but playful naming of apps and utilities. They seemed to have presence. The large and beautiful high resolution icons helped too.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I also love how the name Finder throws shade at Explorer.

Apple&#x27;s system strikes an interesting contrast to Google&#x27;s system for naming products, documented at [1].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bonkersworld.net&#x2F;naming-dartboard" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bonkersworld.net&#x2F;naming-dartboard</a>

ive been making general notes on How To Name Things (from companies to variables) here since its one of the well known hard problems - offering it up for others<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.swyx.io&#x2F;how-to-name-things" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.swyx.io&#x2F;how-to-name-things</a><p>this piece would be a new category for me - how to name products, given a big brand that covers multiple products

It may surprise technical users but a _lot_ of people who have used Macs and iPhones for more than a decade don&#x27;t know what an application is, much less what that application might be called. They just click an icon and things appear - when they don&#x27;t, or the icon is not where they expect it, they are totally stuck.<p>On the one hand, Apple deserves credit for creating an experience where the tool seems to get out of the way.<p>On the other, it&#x27;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.

Hmm, the topic is a nice one, but I think it proves the adage, “a force-directed graph visualization is never the right way to articulate anything.” It’s very hard to discern much of interest.

I think Apple&#x27;s decision to mostly name products based on dictionary words is a good one, and well-executed. Google tries this too but usually misses the mark a bit by being overly generic (Play, Chat, Calendar, etc.) and failing to build a brand around the products themselves.<p>My main gripe with Apple is their decision to not version product names well, e.g. &quot;The New iPad&quot;. This is fine for tech-savvy users who will read the specs and know what they&#x27;re getting, but from what I&#x27;ve seen almost universally confuses less tech-savvy customers and leaves them at the whim of salespeople. Apple doesn&#x27;t need to use model codes or numbers, but should have <i>something</i> that clearly defines new vs. old. They have relented a bit and now have &quot;10th generation&quot; add-ons on official messaging after years of hiding it, which just seems to be like one-button stubbornness where they won&#x27;t concede the obvious.

Can anyone elaborate on the process how companies like Apple can get registered TMs on pretty much any seemingly generic term — Is it that they simply buy out any existing mark that would be remotely conflicting?<p>Some extremes: Soundtrack, Afterburner, Aperture, Cocoa, Exposé, etc.

I feel robbed. There&#x27;s all that lead up... to nothing. Where is the Apple product name generator?!

Apple has been dropping the article from iPhone advertisements. &quot;With iPhone 13, you can...&quot;, not &quot;an&#x2F;the iPhone&quot;. To me, this breaking of orthography feels too much like reverential capitalization for something that is not exactly divine.

Apple’s way of naming things generic names makes it almost impossible to search for information related to them on the internet. Almost think it’s intentional so that people have to use them as the resource for all information related to Apple.

I always wonder why, out of all the mobile products, is the Apple Watch the only one not called the iWatch?<p>iPod, iMac, iPhone, iPad ... Apple Watch?<p>Feels like somewhere along the line they decided that naming all their products something with the letter &#x27;i&#x27; was silly and dropped it.

Its been interesting to watch the naming evolution (or at least the speculated evolution) of Apple&#x27;s upcoming vr&#x2F;ar headset.<p>For example, they were going to use rOS and now it&#x27;s rumored to be xrOS [1] for technical&#x2F;branding&#x2F;market reasons that are evolving behind a curtain.<p>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 !<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;12&#x2F;01&#x2F;apple-headset-operating-system-xros&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;12&#x2F;01&#x2F;apple-headset-operating...</a>

stringByAppendingString:(NSString) is probably one of my favorites namings of Apple. Short and concise.

It would be nice if the visualisation could show the full name of the product and a description, when e.g. tapping a connecting arrow.<p>I didn&#x27;t understand some connections, e.g.: book &amp; apple; or mac &amp; tcp and I had to check against the provided list of trademarks[1].<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;legal&#x2F;intellectual-property&#x2F;trademark&#x2F;appletmlist.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;legal&#x2F;intellectual-property&#x2F;trademark&#x2F;...</a>

iPhone naming will have to be restarted soon. Purely from marketing I feel going from iPhone 14 to iPhone 15 doesn’t sound as impressive as going from iPhone to iPhone 2.<p>After a while these large numbers feel like minors on a software patch and not big leaps that drive sales from average consumers.

Occasionally that “similar sound” proclivity leads them down confusing paths: witness stage manager and center stage, which many people seem to struggle with separating!

Where&#x27;s Gruber&#x27;s wisdom when we need it?

Might be unlabeled nodes but I didn’t spot ultra and mini.

How long are they going to make us wait for MusicTunesPro+

Where is Max on this list? Where are 2, 3, 4, 5, 5s etc?

I wish it would tag or mention the product names that a keyword originates from. I like it a lot though, mostly because I like Apple product names a lot too.

There is apple socks?