[ra7]

It’s sad that a company of very smart people can’t figure out coherent naming.

Can you imagine Apple causing confusion like this? I know it’s not a like-for-like comparison, but everything Apple does it seems like they have a grand strategy that’s clear for everyone to see. Things build up in a modular way to fit a big puzzle.

Google, on the other hand, constantly makes up things on an ad hoc basis.

[kevinventullo]

Maybe not quite the same, but I will point out that “Apple TV” and “Apple TV+” are not just two distinct products, but are in fact entirely different categories of product.

One is a piece of hardware akin to a Roku. The other is a streaming service akin to Netflix.

[electroly]

If you ever take a customer survey for Apple, for the "which Apple products do you use?" question they always have to write something like "Apple TV (a streaming box that plugs into your TV)" and "Apple TV+ (an online streaming service)" because they know the names are so confusing.

[lobsterthief]

Apple TV is also an iOS app, macOS app, tvOS app, and [other generic TV OS] app which allows you to access Apple TV+ content if you have a subscription, but otherwise lets you access services connected to your Apple TV [hardware].

[hbn]

Actually it's more that Apple TV is both a piece of hardware and an iTunes-like service, while Apple TV+ is a subscription service akin to Netflix.

The Apple TV hardware and the Apple TV app on your iDevice can both be used without paying a subscription. The hardware has all other streaming apps a la Roku, and both it and the app on your iPhone can be used to purchase and watch TV shows and movies.

[s3p]

Hello, would you like to watch Apple TV+ or Apple TV Channels on your Apple TV app on your Apple TV?

[ra7]

I use both and I haven’t found it too confusing, to be honest. I just think of it as Apple TV (streaming device) gives access to Apple TV+ (streaming service).

[geodel]

It would just mean there are somethings you found confusing but others don't and vice versa. But you come swinging like you have done survey of Fortune 500 companies and Google stood out in naming confusion.

[ra7]

I don't have to survey Fortune 500 when things are plainly obvious.

Hangouts, Allo, Duo, Buzz, Google Talk, GChat, Inbox, Messenger, Messages, Bard, Gemini, etc. Who else has a track record of chopping and changing like this?

[relativ575]

> things are plainly obvious.

To you. You are projecting.

[ra7]

I guess there are people for whom Google’s constant changes do make sense. One has to simply keep up with their frequent announcements!

[iopq]

https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-app/

Apple TV (app) gives access to Apple TV+ (streaming service)

[tavavex]

Apple TV is mostly associated with the hardware streaming boxes they've been releasing for a long time, Apple TV the app is just an app that performs a similar task on non-TVs. TV+ is available on both of them. Still, there's a bit of confusion around the naming.

[travisgriggs]

In my mind:

- AppleTV - the all things tv stuff from Apple that I pay once for

- AppleTV+ - all things tv stuff from Apple that I have to pay every month for

[azinman2]

Interesting framing!

I guess the + is like the + sign on a calculator ;)

[lupire]

Thanks to Disney, "+" is the industry term for "Streaming"

[sofixa]

One company using it doesn't make it the "industry" term. It was the copycats that followed like Apple and Paramount that made it into an industry term. It kind of makes sense for Paramount, but really doesn't for Apple. Par for the course for Apple TV+, barely baked content on a barely baked poorly named service.

[jpadkins]

Disney+ Paramount+ AppleTV+ Discovery+ in addition to to 4 or 5 more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streaming_media_servic...

It's an industry term now.

[BrazeBeefNoodle]

Odd, I’m not a huge fan of many things Apple is doing these days, but I’ve consistently found their homegrown content to be very high quality.

[sofixa]

I've watched 3 shows on Apple TV+ - Extrapolations, The Morning Show, and Ted Lasso. All of them start very promisingly (as in, the premise is good, the initial setup of actors/sets/etc. is promising, there is lots of potential ways it could go) but they're all superficial, get very predictable, and then the quality steeply goes downhill after a point. All three could have been way better, and had vastly more promise than what they delivered. It was enough to make me cancel the service.

[als0]

I didn't think Apple copied anyone. Pretty much all their subscriptions have had plus like iCloud+ and Fitness+.

[ceejayoz]

That was them copycatting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%2B "Disney+ was launched on November 12, 2019"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud "In June 2021, Apple introduced iCloud+..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_(Apple) "Apple Fitness+ is an ad-free video on demand guided workout streaming service announced during Apple's September 2020 Special Event"

[rafark]

Apple has been using + way before Disney. Apple care+, iPhone 6 Plus and I’m pretty sure they had another plus product or service in the 2000s or earlier that I’m forgetting right now. Edit: it was the Mac plus from 1986.

I’ve always associated “plus” with Apple, not with Disney.

[lupire]

Copycats did it... thanks to Disney.

[chimeracoder]

> Thanks to Disney, "+" is the industry term for "Streaming"

Google+ was too far ahead of its time!

[rvnx]

Isn't it closed ?

[islewis]

> Messy branding is now par for the course at Apple. The iPad line alone is something out of a Dell catalog: iPad, iPad 10thgen, iPad Air, iPad Mini, iPad Pro.

a comment from another thread this morning- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39300741

[skywhopper]

I mean, Air, Mini, and Pro are all distinct form factors. It's confusing only to the extent that you might not know which one is "best" from a CPU/memory/storage POV. But Apple has succeeded for iOS products at least at making that distinction mostly meaningless: pick the form factor you want, then pick the storage capacity and sometimes the color, you're done.

[Eric_WVGG]

The iPad Air is not a distinct form factor from the iPad.

[sofixa]

Is the Air, the Mini or the no-named one the smallest?

[codezero]

My answer was that it was obvious but I went down a rabbit hole of comparison pages and learned the current Air is higher end than the current iPad.

[TylerE]

My suspicion is that that there is no iPad 11 and the iPad Air 6th Gen (with an M3 or something, maybe an M1 still) is the base model going forward.

iPad 10 is still A14 Bionic, not Apple Silicon.

[ianburrell]

iPad is the cheap one, the 10th generation is $449 vs $599 for Air. And the 9th is still being sold for $329. Lots of people want a basic tablet for browsing and don't need power for pseudo-laptop.

The iPad Mini has A15 Bionic.

[sofixa]

Higher end, but is it smaller or bigger? And what about the Mini?

[thesuitonym]

It seems to be something all large software companies struggle with. The product team comes up with some cool or interesting thing, gives it a decent name, then some marketing manager trying to justify their position decides everything needs to be rebranded under the same umbrella, and a wave of product renames gets started, but never fully finished. Then, two to three years later, some marketing manager needs to justify their position again, and so decides to rebrand everything under a new name, even though the last name change hasn't even been fully finished yet.

[travisgriggs]

This in a nutshell.

What I’ve seen, is that when consensus can’t quickly be reached among different naming factions, someone will say “well our customers know and love Brand Word XYZ, let’s just bolt a qualifier on that and win for us!”

[StevePerkins]

> Can you imagine Apple causing confusion like this?

After 14 years of using Siri, I can't imagine Apple developing any competent AI tools in the first place.

[sholladay]

My impression is they haven’t focused much on general purpose AI. But Apple actually has a lot of very good AI models sprinkled throughout its products. Just a few that come to mind…

- Tap and hold an object in Photos and it will figure out how to separate it from the background for you

- AirPods noise cancelation

- iOS 17 autocorrect is based on a transformer model and works noticeably better

- Optimized Battery Charging, which learns your charging habits and tries to delay putting a full charge into your battery until just before you unplug, in order to avoid damaging the battery

- Detection Mode is an awesome accessibility feature where you point the camera at something and it will describe what it sees

Apple calls all of these things Machine Learning instead of AI and they are all optional features within an existing product. Seems like a very deliberate strategy. But they are utilizing the latest techniques. CoreML and the M series chips are also very competent at training and using AI models.

Maybe the reason Siri is stuck in the dark ages is because it would be entirely AI dependent. They could have a “no generative AI” mode but nobody would use it. I’m guessing Apple is looking for a breakthrough in how to prevent it from hallucinating / lying.

[ysofunny]

naming things is hard

is one of the cultural difference between a computer-first logical mindset contrasted with the mathematics-first mindset

the mathematics first mentality does not properly recognize the importance and the difficulty of having good names for things, whereas the computological view recognizes both: the importance and the difficulty

[chatmasta]

Insofar as naming things is basically applied category theory, I'd trust a mathematician to name a set of products more tersely and understandably than I would an English major.

[iopq]

A math major named this monitor:

https://www.viewsonic.com/eu/products/sheet/VX2758-2KP-MHD

[chatmasta]

It's unique and easily searchable when I want documentation specific to that product. And when deciding which monitor to buy, I can focus on comparing the technical specifications rather than relying on some heuristics based on how the name "feels" to me.

[iopq]

I would rather name it the 2020-27in-QHD-IPS-144Hz

[yakshaving_jgt]

…I don't understand? VX2758-2KP-MHD is a fairly commonly used word in the Polish language.

[sirsinsalot]

It is even my surname!

[ysofunny]

I'm running a contest in my head: "which academic discipline can transfer more information with less text"

so far it's a close race between philosophers and mathematicians. I'll take your comment as a vote in favor of mathematicians

[chatmasta]

I don't think philosophers should even be in the running for this title. They write way too many words when few do trick.

[ysofunny]

but talking is part of the contest (I should not have said it was about "text"; nonetheless academia still maintains an oral tradition in teaching and thesis defenses)

so while written philosophy is verbose, philosophers talking can "transfer" a lot of "meaning" with short sentence

whereas mathematicians will likely need to talk for a very long time for what they can write down in a short terse equation

[thfuran]

Who do the few words trick? Why do the philosophers wait for that before writing their many words?

[sirsinsalot]

Classical musicians. Lots of information with very few symbols nevermind text.

[pitherpather]

> naming things is hard

Of tangential interest: I recently heard that Faraday, while discovering new electromagnetic phenomenon, then turned to either a linguist or classicist for help in assigning/inventing terms for them. (I cannot find a link for this just now, so consider this heresay.)

[thfuran]

How many mathematicians do you know? All the mathematicians I know are interested in both notational and linguistic clarity.

[ysofunny]

lucky you, all the mathematics proessors I've had scarcely know how to work a computer

another cultural difference is the kind of homework they hand out; the difference boils down to whether you hand over a printed (or printable) proof checked by reading through it, or a runnable program or script checked by running it

[smabie]

What does this have to do with naming things

[bearjaws]

The naming on iPhones and Macbooks is terrible, and confusing now that the M3 Pro offers quite different CPU and bandwidth limits compared to M2 Pro...

[vineyardmike]

What? These are the easiest products ever. Compared to the crap that every other company generates. Like the Pixel 6 vs 6 pro vs 6a vs “Fold (no number)”

The iPhone is literally just iPhone <Number> with Pro for high end, or no modifier for low end. Add “max” for big screen. The only confusion maybe is “max” isn’t obviously referring to screen size.

iPhone 15, 15 Pro, 15 max, iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Macs are the same way. I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s confusing that “M3” processor has different specs than “M2” processor.

Beyond that, Mac laptops are Pro vs Air, defining how powerful vs portable they are with associated screen size variant 14, 16 and 13,15.

[Me1000]

M2 Max, M2 Ultra. Which is better?

MagSafe means two different products.

The current MacBook Air is thicker than an older MacBook.

I’m not even sure what a “pro” phone is, but okay.

The iPad lineup has been a total mess for years.

I’m not saying these names are impossible to decipher, but they do require some research.

[vineyardmike]

> M2 Max, M2 Ultra. Which is better?

I see your point, I do agree that the name of their processors were too marketing team driven.

> The current MacBook Air is thicker than an older MacBook.

The current air is plenty thin to be called “air”, and they haven’t made a “MacBook” since like 2016. It’s not confusing here IMO.

> I’m not even sure what a “pro” phone is, but okay.

It’s the line with overall better specs. The last 20 years of tech products have solidified this definition is. Not a new concept.

> The iPad lineup has been a total mess for years

Yes this is absolutely embarrassing for them. I presume they have some BS market segmentation reasoning. Looking at their website, I can probably explain the target market for each one, but it’s still a disaster. They should dramatically redo it, and designate the really cheap one as “iPad for education” to totally segment it out, so it can be “iPad small screen, medium screen, large screen, and iPad with Mac processor and pro tier features”

[l33t7332273]

To be honest I think it’s clear that something called ultra is better than something called max. If it were called super-max or turbo-max or something I’d see your point.

> The current MacBook Air is thicker than an older MacBook

I feel like you’re just looking for things to be mad about here; it’s thinner than _current_ MacBooks.

> I’m not even sure what a “pro” phone is, but okay

Okay this is just ridiculous. It seems you would be unhappy with any naming convention other than “iPhone Good”, “iPhone Better”, and “iPhone Best”.

[Me1000]

There is no current MacBook, but you’d be forgiven for not knowing that since the names are confusing.

[arrakeen]

> iPhone 15, 15 Pro, 15 max, iPhone 15 Pro Max.

it's actually 15 Plus rather than 15 Max, which i'm sure you now see is a bit confusing

[vineyardmike]

Getting it wrong doesn’t help my overall argument (ha!) but admittedly plus is even more clear than max that’s it’s just a screen size bump.

[ambichook]

pixel is super easy for me to understand at least, and has been consistent for like, forever. 6 is the "standard" model, 6 pro is an upgraded model and the 6a is the budget model. including the fold in this argument is irrelevant as its an entirely different product.

[apapapa]

MS does the same thing... Look at Xbox naming history

https://recordhead.biz/history-of-microsoft-xbox-consoles/

[hbn]

It's really not that bad. Nintendo's got more confusing SKUs in some of their product lineups than that.

The only thing that was stupid with Microsoft's naming was this latest generation that they call it Series S and Series X, which is bad for 2 reasons:

- No one knows what to call them as a general term. You can say "this game is for PS5" but for them it's like "this game is for Xbox Series"? I guess they just want you to call it "Xbox" cause that's all it says at the top of the game cases now.

- They just came from selling the One S and One X, which was a mid-lifespan hardware update, the S being a smaller formfactor Xbox One and the X being a spec bump. Confusing that they continue to sell and S and an X but it's a whole new console.

They should have already learned from Nintendo who made this mistake several times with the 3DS (which many didn't realize was an entirely new but backwards compatible system from the DS), new 3DS (yes that was an actual system's name that had exclusive games that couldn't be played on the normal 3DS), and Wii U (which everyone thought was a tablet controller for the Wii)

[everforward]

As someone without an Xbox, nor friends that play Xbox, Xbox's naming is terrible and confusing. It used to not bother me when I followed Xbox news and was "in the know", but now it's irritating.

Xbox -> Xbox 360 -> Xbox One -> Xbox Series (?). I still don't know whether S or X is the "good one". Compare it to Playstation: PS1 -> PS2 -> PS3 -> PS4 -> PS5. The upgraded line is "PS $number Pro".

Someone can tell me they have a PS5 Pro, and I know what they mean. They could tell me they want a PS6 and I know what they mean, even if the PS6 hasn't even been announced yet.

Someone tells me they have an Xbox One X and my eyes glaze over. Prior to now, that means nothing to me. I don't know when the Xbox One came out, I don't know if it's their newest line, I don't know if X is the Pro or if it's the budget. The S and X may not even indicate pro and budget, but I think they do.

At least Nintendo's names are kind of cute. It's still silly, but at least Wii or Switch is kind of endearing. Xbox Series X sounds like they let an edgy teenager name it; having X on both ends reminds me of the days of xX420ShadowRanger69Xx usernames. Also doesn't make a clean acronym; XSX is both hard to say and makes me think more of SXSW than Xbox.

[hbn]

> At least Nintendo's names are kind of cute. It's still silly, but at least Wii or Switch is kind of endearing.

Those were not the ones I called out as bad. Those are good because when they came out they were unique and memorable.

Let me list out the following consoles:

Nintendo DS

Nintendo DS lite

Nintendo DSi

Nintendo DSi XL

Nintendo 3DS

Nintendo 3DS XL

Nintendo 2DS

New Nintendo 3DS

New Nintendo 3DS XL

New Nintendo 2DS XL

There's technically only 2 generations of Nintendo consoles in there, but the DSi had some exclusive physical games that were sold in store, and couldn't be played on the DS. And the new 3DS had some games that couldn't be played on the original 3DS.

[everforward]

Some of those are pretty bad. "New Nintendo 3DS" particularly so. Man, I didn't realize how much of the DS line I missed.

Some of them I don't mind too much. The XL and Lite SKUs make sense to me, presuming they mean what they appear to.

3DS makes intuitive sense to me, it's clever.

There's a separate conversation to be had about whether it's too many SKUs (probably) but name-wise I only really hate "New Nintendo" and DSi. DSi only because it's far less intuitive than the others.

[jumpkick]

I think the Xbox naming is all because the PlayStation came out before the Xbox and if Microsoft would have used a similar version-incrementing naming convention they would have always been one version behind Sony. Thus the second generation of the Xbox being the 360, which competed with the PS3: the 360 had a “3” in its name, so to a consumer’s mind they were comparable.

[delecti]

I agree that that's why they didn't do a simple XBox 2, but I have never in the past 20 years had the thought that 360 starts with 3, so it's the competitor to the PS3. But even with that reasonable limitation guiding their decision, going from OG to "360", "One", and then "Series" is a pretty huge failing to establish a consistent branding. And "Series" in general doesn't give a natural sounding way to refer to this generation as a whole.

[everforward]

Ah, that makes some degree of sense. They could have done degrees of rotation like skateboard tricks, but then I guess the Xbox One would have been Xbox 720 which sounds like it's a 720p console.

[lloeki]

> S and X

The S naming has been consistent since the 360: it's the small one.

It's not a stretch of anyone's imagination that the other one is the bigger one (I mean that's t-shirt sizing), nor that it exists in the same generation as the S and therefore is not bigger just for the sake of taking more real estate under the TV.

The one they nailed though is Xbox One X, which is recursive.

[infinitezest]

I OP just finished telling you that is _is_ a stretch to their imagination. Thats great that you understand it though.

[apapapa]

They need a model E, like Tesla

[ramraj07]

All the non programming intelligence in a place like Google likely goes into figuring out how to protect and expand one's turf, which will explain this emblematic mess.

[deprecative]

This has to be what it's like at Google. You have marketing on one end of a table and developers in another county.

[snapetom]

I’d like to direct you to the current lineup and features of Apple iPads and the various pencil/pen options.

[shadowgovt]

Yes. Google's approach (especially on the research side) is "Make cool stuff; we'll figure out what to do with it later." That's sort of always been the case, and it does lead to brand churn because the branding people aren't brought into the conversation early.

[m2mdas2]

Compare it with Microsoft's copilot branding. It's simple, both casual and business people can understand what it does. Also appending it to other services like github or office adds more value to them.

[iamdelirium]

Literally a few days ago:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23960517/microsoft-copil...

Then you have also under Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot (not to be confused with Copilot X).

[potatolicious]

It's the org chart. Google doesn't have a centralized marketing department that governs all of the company's products. Marketing is handled at the PA level (or sometimes even lower).

Likewise for engineering, Google is organized into Product Areas (Geo, Search, Cloud, etc.), which also explains why one product would get some feature that would really make sense integrated into another... but it never happens.

Google is exceptionally good at making its products be near-perfectly reflective of its internal organization scheme. So reflective you can brush your teeth with it.

I'm often a broken record about this on HN - but IMO the PA organizational structure is a strong inhibitor to Google's success and ability to create coherent suites of products.

[gmerc]

bingo. Google has long been reduced to ship their org chart. Visible every single time - hangouts to chat to whateverthe hell

[mushufasa]

On the flip side, which large tech companies that have have an equally high velocity of shipping do this well?

Amazon?

[potatolicious]

Mmm I don't really agree with the premise of the question at all. In my experience Google doesn't ship significantly faster than any other FAANG.

Meta for example ships extraordinarily quickly (see: Threads) but their products are considerably more tightly integrated and demonstrate an ability to leverage across the ecosystem (see: Instagram-Threads integration) that Google has trouble with.

More to the point (and extra points in favor of Meta for this): Google's apparent product velocity is a bit deceptive? The company ships a lot of ill-considered product. Is it superior product velocity if the product is consistently half-baked (and maybe more importantly: will die before it ever becomes fully baked)?

If you put those two factors together and consider product velocity as how quickly a company ships stuff that actually sticks (as opposed to a simple exercise in how quickly one can release code), Google's product velocity is IMO substantially inferior to all of FAANG. Meta, Apple, Amazon, and MSFT at this point are generating sticky product at a substantially greater pace.

[georgemcbay]

Why bother intelligently naming things when you're likely to just kill them off in a year because they don't drive advertising?

[recursive]

I take it you didn't see the story today about how iTunes will no longer be used to play music. (tunes)

[danielrhodes]

That's because this is an org chart, not a cohesive product.

[nextworddev]

Maybe they are just book smart..