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October 4, 2011

Inconsistency (, )

by fluffy at 11:13 AM

These are the sorts of things that bug me:

  1. iPhone (the first model)
  2. iPhone 3G (the second model)
  3. iPhone 3GS (the third model)
  4. iPhone 4 (the fourth model)
  5. iPhone 4S (the fifth model)

So if the next redesign is iPhone 5, then that retroactively makes the iPhone 4's name pretty silly. But if they call it iPhone 6, everyone who doesn't have a sense of history will be upset.

Speaking of history, I'm glad that Apple finally has a device (the new Nano) that does all of the fun pedometer/run timing/achievements/etc. stuff that my Sony Ericsson W580 did four years ago. Maybe I'll upgrade. (I probably won't.)

Anyway this reminds me a lot of the ridiculousness of Intel's CPU naming/numbering scheme until recently:

  • 8088 lineage
    1. 8088
    2. 8086
    3. 80186
    4. 80286 (the second?)
    5. 80386
    6. 80486
  • Pentium lineage
    1. Pentium
    2. Pentium Pro (P6)
    3. Pentium II (P6)
    4. Pentium III (P6)
    5. Pentium 4 (P7 ARGH)
  • Pentium M lineage
    1. Pentium M
    2. Core/Core Duo
    3. Core 2/Core 2 Duo (arguably correctly-numbered if you consider Core to be a new line and not an offshoot of Pentium M)
    4. Core i3/i5/i7

These are just the kinds of things that bug me way too much, I know.

Comments

#14243 10/08/2011 10:33 pm
At least they're reusing the S suffix as "refresh of a model without redesigning the case". The 4 naming reminds me of the Xbox 360 thing- "Well, if we call it something with a 2 in it, and Sony is making the PS3, we'll look outdated"... Now that they've made the iPhone 4, unless they go back to naming it after network protocol upgrades (iPhone LTE?), the numbers are going to keep going up weirdly. How about naming them after animals, like MacOS releases? I might actually buy the Apple iMarmoset.