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How Apple names things
- swyx 4y agoive 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 https://www.swyx.io/how-to-name-things 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
- bkishan 4y agoThis is really interesting, thanks!
- nomilk 4y agoThanks for sharing this, it will be my canonical resource on the topic. (also, it brings me joy that someone obsessed enough to make such an informative and lengthy compilation of pure ideas; a service to the community!).
- O__________O 4y agoNumber one rule to be is that it should be universally unique and easy to search for, especially if it’s frequently searched for on Google. Being universally unique might mean if the primary name (company, app, etc) is combined with the thing name (product, variable, etc) it is unique.
- anoncow 4y agoThere is apple socks?
- hutattedonmyarm 4y agoThere used to be iPod socks made by Apple
- Mistletoe 4y ago[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Czarcasm 4y agoThe Airpods and Apple Watch I think were both legitimately innovative when first released. They were massive leaps over what previous existed in their respective segments.
- changoplatanero 4y agoThe first thing on your list, Apple Watch, is only the most successful watch of all time and a ten billion dollar a year business. If that doesn’t satisfy you as something new then I don’t know what would
- jodrellblank 4y agoAirPods are also a completely new multi-billion/year business, and competitors went from “we’re keeping a headphone socket” to releasing their own weirdly shaped headphones in charging boxes very quickly.
- usui 4y agoI 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.
- hammock 4y agoWhere is Max on this list? Where are 2, 3, 4, 5, 5s etc?
- pbininda 4y agomax is in there between mini, pad and power. You have to zoom into the interactive version a bit to see it.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoI always wonder why, out of all the mobile products, is the Apple Watch the only one not called the iWatch? 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.
- _s 4y agoPreviously held trademark / copyright somewhere if I remember correctly - the company that owned it came out and more or less no to the name being used; when rumours were swirling about the "iWatch".
- marban 4y agoGiven that the I was the prefix of the dotcom-days, I'd say it has become too much of an obviousness for a device to be connected.
- emadabdulrahim 4y agoBecause Apple is a tech company, but also considered a luxury brand. A watch is mostly a fashionable accessory. iWatch would've been a gadget-first name. Apple Watch sounds much better if you're trying to sell it to fashion aware people, besides people interested in the best tech. That's my theory anyway. Probably wrong lol.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago>Apple Watch sounds much better if you're trying to sell it to fashion aware people 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.
- nicky0 4y agoThe real elite are wearing F-91W's thanks very much. :) 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.
- marban 4y agoCan 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? Some extremes: Soundtrack, Afterburner, Aperture, Cocoa, Exposé, etc.
- nerdponx 4y agoIt's not like all uses of the word "aperture" now refer to an Apple registered trademark. It's just that you can't name an image organizer program Aperture. It's not really a generic term in that context, although it's obviously evocative.
- error503 4y agoTrademarks are allowed to be 'generic' English words, they just can't be purely descriptive of the product/service/company. You can't trademark a name like 'Computer Store' for your computer store, for example. In the cases you list, I don't think any of these purely describe the app/feature's function (these are pretty opaque names actually, except maybe Soundtrack and Aperture), so should be eligible. '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/appletmlist.html 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.
- nerdponx 4y ago> 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!
- lwneal 4y agoApple's system strikes an interesting contrast to Google's system for naming products, documented at [1]. [1] https://bonkersworld.net/naming-dartboard https://bonkersworld.net/naming-dartboard
- Closi 4y agoAh yes - 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.
- ragebol 4y agoAlphaGo -> AI system from a Google sibling playing: Go. Go -> an ancient board game
- moffkalast 4y agoBut was it written in Go?
- ragebol 4y agoDon't know, now I have to go look that up
- moffkalast 4y agoIf Google is so good, why haven't they made Google 2 eh?
- a3w 4y agoGoogle 3.0 would be a minimum. In industry 4.0 times, it should at least be google 4.2, but why bother with minor versions: Google Googol! (with or without the faculty sign. As long as users say the want the new Samsung iPhone [sic], no one cares if that is barely even a meaningful number)
- tacker2000 4y agoThis reads like some typical fanboi stuff. 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…?
- spaceman_2020 4y agoI reckon by naming things sequentially, you build in the expectation that a later variant is “better” than a previous one - Windows 11 is “better” than Windows 10. Which isn’t always the case.
- phist_mcgee 4y agoWhich is definitely not the case
- gleenn 4y agoDo you sincerely think the marketing team wants to names things so accurately as to admit the next version is worse than the previous? It seems like that would be a really bad strategy IMHO.
- sbuk 4y ago> * 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…?* 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
- ralfd 4y agoBut did Mojave come before or after Sierra? The cat names were more memorable and spanned a longer time line instead of being yearly releases.
- raydiatian 4y agoHow long are they going to make us wait for MusicTunesPro+
- jimmySixDOF 4y agoIts been interesting to watch the naming evolution (or at least the speculated evolution) of Apple's upcoming vr/ar headset. 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-system-xros/ https://www.macrumors.com/2022/12/01/apple-headset-operating...
- vvillena 4y agoNot a good idea to name a new OS "rOS" when ROS, the Robot Operating System, is already a thing.
- easton 4y agoI mean IOS was already a thing when they named the iPhone’s operating system that. In fact, I think they got in an argument with Cisco over it? Guessing they think of a consumer hasn’t likely heard of it it won’t be confusing.
- reaperhulk 4y agoOccasionally that “similar sound” proclivity leads them down confusing paths: witness stage manager and center stage, which many people seem to struggle with separating!
- jiggywiggy 4y agostringByAppendingString:(NSString) is probably one of my favorites namings of Apple. Short and concise.
- aaronharnly 4y agoHmm, 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.
- nicky0 4y agoAh yes, Harnly's law
- currywurst 4y agoIn general I would agree, but since you mentioned "never" I have to interject ; ) 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.
- patientplatypus 4y ago[dead]
- knolan 4y agoOne of the nice things I liked about OS X when I moved from Windows/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. 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.
- saagarjha 4y agoFinder predates Explorer by about a decade :)
- knolan 4y agoUnintentionally then! Long live the BSOD beige CRTs in Network view.
- anaganisk 4y agoMean while Samsung, Samsung notes Samsung file manager Samsung blah Samsung bleh Samsung blush
- Kwpolska 4y agoIn Windows 11, when you type "disk", you get disk cleanup, defragment/optimize, and then disk management. You can also type "partitions" and get what you want as the first result.
- knolan 4y agoThat’s about ten years too late.
- thih9 4y agoIt would be nice if the visualisation could show the full name of the product and a description, when e.g. tapping a connecting arrow. 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/appletmlist.html https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/...
- Caitlynbranson 4y ago[flagged]
- twobitshifter 4y agoMight be unlabeled nodes but I didn’t spot ultra and mini.
- O__________O 4y agoApple’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.
- als0 4y agoWhere's Gruber's wisdom when we need it?
- Maursault 4y agoI feel robbed. There's all that lead up... to nothing. Where is the Apple product name generator?!
- 3pac 4y agoApple has been dropping the article from iPhone advertisements. "With iPhone 13, you can...", not "an/the iPhone". To me, this breaking of orthography feels too much like reverential capitalization for something that is not exactly divine.
- blamazon 4y agoIt seems to me an ordinal rule of business is, in order to scale, sell systemic solutions to customer's problems, instead of selling mere widgets. 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.
- JayStavis 4y agoMy recollection from the original iPhone keynotes is that there never was an article. Jobs presented "iPhone" and article-less was dominant in all company messaging for the product.
- kergonath 4y agoYou’re right. It never was “the iPhone”, it has been “iPhone” since day 1. And Apple being Apple, they are very consistent with it.
- hmate9 4y agoiPhone 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. After a while these large numbers feel like minors on a software patch and not big leaps that drive sales from average consumers.
- coldpie 4y agoScreaming into the void for years to stop using numbers for versioning (and codenames, my god, please send anyone who uses codenames directly into the core of the sun) and start using dates. iPhone 2017. Firefox 2022.05. Systemd 2022.04.23. Aaaaaaaaagh.
- kergonath 4y agoIsn’t Samsung selling Galaxy S 23 or something like that?
- efsavage 4y agoI think Apple'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. 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.
- sebazzz 4y ago“Apple iPad [model] (<year>)" is what Apple uses, doesn’t it?
- dpkirchner 4y agoHow many times have you had to look up whether it is Google Workplace or Google Workspace? I get it wrong more than I get it right.
- whatch 4y ago"Play" is my favorite example. Even after a lot of years of using it I still cannot remember what is the current name for their "App Store" when I need to tell someone to look for some app there.
- groovybits 4y agoIs the Play Store no longer the name of Android's app store? I haven't looked at Android in a while. I agree, "Play" is very generic. But I thought the name "Play Store" had become ubiquitous among Android users, even non-tech-savvy ones.
- whywhywhywhy 4y ago>"The New iPad". 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.
- karaterobot 4y agoWow, I disagree strongly with this one. It's so frustrating that I have to describe a feature to a search engine to find out what it'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't mean anything, and aren't helpful. They'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's what.
- zhte415 4y agoCould we just name things functionally+unique? 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.
- user_named 4y agoIt's bizarre that you think this would work, and more so that it would work universally for every language.
- majewsky 4y ago> PvVLC 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?
- uranusjr 4y agoHungarian Notation essentially? Regardless of (assumed) technical advantages I thought we’ve settled most users just don’t like it.
- mort96 4y ago
- subpixel 4y agoIt may surprise technical users but a _lot_ of people who have used Macs and iPhones for more than a decade don'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't, or the icon is not where they expect it, they are totally stuck. 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.
- dehrmann 4y ago> when they don't, or the icon is not where they expect it, they are totally stuck Ah, yes. The reason MS Edge had to start with an E so the icon could still be an e.