Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop

> Consumer electronics naming is very simple. Make a good product with a simple name. “iPhone”, “comma”, “Z Fold”. Then every year or two, add one to the number of that product. If it’s a small refresh, you can add a letter after the number. “2 3 3X 4” “4 4s 5 5s 6 …” “2 3 4 5 6 7” Why is this so hard for companies like HP?

Oh man I feel this every time there’s a games console launch. I still have no idea what the latest Xbox is called but Sony gets it right with “Playstation <N>”

Apple loses some points here since every macbook from like 2007 until 2020 was just called “Macbook pro” with no year officially in the name so you have to be really careful when eg looking at used listings for macbooks. But since the M1 it’s been good with M<1-5>

We could have had Xbox 720, 1080... but no. xbox 1 x one one x triple X amsterdam edition.

On the flipside, there were the days of the Power Macintosh 6100, 7500, 8500, 9600, and other models. It’s very easy to look up different models using these names, and there was also logic to the naming scheme, but it was confusing for people new to Macs to figure out, and this was back in the 1990s when there were still large amounts of people in the developed world who never owned a personal computer.

Once Steve Jobs returned, he replaced the product numbering scheme with a quadrant: consumer desktop (iMac), consumer laptop (iBook), high-end desktop (Power Mac), and high-end laptop (PowerBook). The high-end models had a suffix (G3, G4, G5), but it got confusing with all the variants (e.g., Wallsteeet vs Lombard vs Pismo PowerBook G3, various revisions of Titanium and Aluminum PowerBook G4, etc.)

And there are two Xbox Ones

What to expect, when Microsoft decides to do stupid things like renaming .NET Core into .NET 5, thus everyone that doesn't pay attention to Microsoft world keeps thinking .NET is Windows only, as the .NET Framework was always known as plain .NET in most circles.

You know as a company that you have gone out of the ability to create something if you come up first with name changes of existing products. Looking at you, Office (or whatever your name is today).

Google Workspace hasn’t changed its name in a few years now. Do you think it’s due for a change or has it finally sobered up?

This reminds me of the parody from 20 years ago of what would happen if Microsoft would re-design the iPod packaging - including the name of the product. It seems that nothing has changed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

Xbox One Kinect, Xbox One non-Kinect, Xbox One S with disc drive, Xbox One S All-Digital Edition, Xbox One X

And then you have the various drive options, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, game bundles, day one edition. We are talking about dozens of variants.

If I dare to ask, why do you care so much about naming ?

It's something that has always bothered me in reviews as well. To me a product is primarily supposed to be used, and I also don't want to buy a new one every 6 months.

For instance I like my headphones very much, been using them for 4 years now. I did a ton of research and read a bunch of reviews before buying them, and to keep the exact and unique product name somewhere for research, but from the point they were delivered to me whatever they're named has been completely irrelevant. Same for my computer or phone, I could check the marketing name, and there is skew number somewhere on the product, but in my everyday life it's completely useless.

I'd argue having a impossible to remember but perfectly unique and SEO friendly names wins over using common names like Apple does, for my purposes at least.

> On the flipside, there were the days of the Power Macintosh 6100, 7500, 8500, 9600, and other models. It’s very easy to look up different models using these names, and there was also logic to the naming scheme, but it was confusing for people new to Macs to figure out, and this was back in the 1990s when there were still large amounts of people in the developed world who never owned a personal computer.

Nokia model numbers (and "series" numbers, too) in the 00s were far worse.

Maybe because I want to know if Xbox ASS is better than Xbox PEE without having a manual on my hands? Or what Microsoft Surface pro ai copilot means?

I can't tell you how many people are confused that (1) Microsoft dropped "Core" from .NET 5+, and that .NET 4.8 and .NET 8 are not the same thing.

Microsoft jumped from .NET Core 3 to .Net (Core) 5 to avoid people conflating .NET Core 4 with .NET Framework 4.

Now tech adjacent people in my world, including people from Microsoft, think .NET Core 8 and .NET Framrwork 4.8 refer to the same version.

Luckily that problem will go away as we do our now biannual ritual of upgrading .NET versions, frustratingly.

My favorite from Apple is "the new iPad" that they used to refer to the 3rd gen iPad.

I have no idea what that is. Is it the Google suite of office tools or something?

Easy, do you want links to podcast interviews from .NET team members where they mention this still being an issue with .NET adoption outside traditional Microsoft shops.

For example, see Mandy Mantiquila interview with Nick Chapsas, if I remember correctly it is one of them.

When you go looking for a car will you buy the Peugeot 3008 because it has a higher number than the 208 ? Or will you do research, go to the company site and look at the product description, compare the specs and make your opinion about what best fits your needs ?

Right now there's about 5 lines of Surface devices with each their very specific purpose and tradeoffs. I'd be shocked at someone buying one solely based on the how the name sounds or what they assume it means without looking at the actual product pages.

I suspect they were referring to the first Xbox. It used to be colloquially referred to as "Xbox One" before Microsoft decided on their piss-poor naming scheme after the 360.

It's google's b2b offering (suite of tools including gmail, google docs, drive etc). It's an Office 365 competitor and changed name more times than I can remember. GSuite, Google Apps, Google Apps for Work, Google Apps for Business...

> When you go looking for a car will you buy the Peugeot 3008 because it has a higher number than the 208 ? Or will you do research, go to the company site and look at the product description, compare the specs and make your opinion about what best fits your needs ?

You're comparing model to generation, not sure what's that supposed to mean.

Yes, I will buy Peugeot 208 over 207 because it is obviously newer. And the point isn't that I'm buying solely because of a number, the point is that it is much more intuitive to have simple naming over "jerk my co, pilot, ai".

Those aren't really good names either, IMO. Even the 360 was just OK. They should just have gone with Xbox 2. Or Xbox 3 and skipped a number if they really were worried about lagging behind PlayStation as it's sometimes alleged.

> You're comparing model to generation, not sure what's that supposed to mean.

If you can accepts different schemes depending on the maker's intent, I really don't get why you're distressed by XBox naming different console lines with different monikers. I guess it all comes down to whether you like the name or not, and there was nothing to argue on from the very start.

> Yes, I will buy Peugeot 208 over 207 because it is obviously newer

That's a disturbing logic to me, but you do you.

I like the joke where windows 9,..10,..11 would eventually give us windows 1995 again.

HP is like they assigned good people to the right task, had everyone make a draft, pulled it from their hands and declared it finished. The combined drafts do not resemble a product so they also have someone make a draft solution for that problem.

> Oh man I feel this every time there’s a games console launch. I still have no idea what the latest Xbox is called but Sony gets it right with “Playstation <N>”

Not so easy: even for old PlaysStations, there existed different versions:

1. PlayStation, PSOne, PlayStation Classic

2. PlayStation 2, PlayStation 2 Slim

3. PlayStation 3, PlayStation 3 Slim, PlayStation 3 Super-Slim

4. PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Slim, PlayStation 4 Pro

5. PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, PlayStation 5 Slim, PlayStation 5 Digital Edition Slim, PlayStation 5 Pro

And then Sony used the PlayStation branding for other consoles, too:

- PlayStation Portable

- PlayStation Vita

- PlayStation Portal

- PlayStation TV (which is also called PlayStation Vita TV)

I admit that this design is not the most aesthetically pleasing one, but it really contains all the relevant information - which in my opinion cannot be said about the Apple packaging.

Microsoft did that because it thought you were too stupid to understand that the Xbox 2 was the same generation of the ps3.

Cars are a poor analogy because model year works as a version number. I'd rather have a 2025 Peugeot whatever than a 2015.

I think what you listed matches with what he suggested, they just have words instead of a letter for the variants. Which is actually better in this example because the "Slim", "Pro" and "Digital" mean what you would expect them to mean here, versus the "a" in "Pixel 9a" in somewhat obtuse.

Dell is messing this up badly even though they almost got the strategy, "Dell Pro 14 Premium" is a real product and "Dell Pro Max 14 Plus" is also a real product, there's no way anyone knows what that means.

why are you so deliberately not getting the point?

if I ask you to choose between xbox 360, xbox one and xbox series s which one is the latest?

and then if I ask you to choose between ps2, 3, 4 and 5 which one is the latest?

what do you think are your chances to get it right for xbox?

I hate that iPad, it’s still on my shelf.

The real answer is that you either rename the product right around version 10 (because 17 is too big for iPhone versions) or you use the year like sports video games.

> That's a disturbing logic to me, but you do you.

Buying 2025 model over 2014 is truly disturbing.

The screen is great. There are third party driver boards to use them as external displays.

Sony never used the names "Slim" or "Super Slim" because the product was the same and ran the same software.

A Peugeot 208 is around 17k euros. Throwing that money at a dealer solely because it's one more than the number before is disturbing, yes.

Edit: When you're saying the 207 is from 2014, you're already doing your research past looking at the number. I'm not even sure what we're still discussing.

Do you actually want the 2025 touchscreen version above the 2015 all physical button model for instance ?

And what if it's still sold but at a third of the price ? "it's newer" is the main decision factor when it's throwaway money. Otherwise you're thinking a bit longer about what to buy for 17k euros.

Chances are 50/50 that they forgot that they have this product or they're going to kill it in January.

/s

Microsoft Teams. Teams (Personal), Teams (Work and School), Teams (New). A year or so ago you night have had all three of these installed at the same time..

and that's AFTER they changed the names of Personal and Work. Before that, you'd have Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Teams. One was purple with a white T and the other was white with a purple T.

If you tried to login with the personal version, it would error-out but not give any indication you may be using the wrong version. Let's be real. NO ONE is using Teams in their personal life. /rant

They're just infuriating on every level when it comes to naming things.

It's really hard to come up with a product name as good as "iPhone". Simple does not mean easy.

Unless they're writing a phone review, nobody ever says things like "I took a picture with my Galaxy", or "I edited the video on my Pixel", but substitute "iPhone" and they sound normal.

It also hasn't become generic. Nobody calls another brand of phone an "iPhone" unless they actually mistook it for one.

I guess we should give Cisco credit where due:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(internet_appliance)>

<https://www.cultofmac.com/apple-history/cisco-infogear-iphon...>