Ken Segall, the guy who came up with the iMac name, says Apple has totally blown it with the iPhone naming convention—or lack of convention. He says it’s confusing, and mixing Roman numerals with letters, and making those letters seem arbitrary at best. He says in a blog post,
Last year’s models set new standards for complexity. We had an 8, 8 Plus, X and SE. That’s two numbers, one Roman numeral, one paring of letters, plus an odd numerical gap between 8 and 10. Or, in Apple lingo, between 8 and X.
Now we have Roman numerals and letters, and odds are it’ll get worse next year with the iPhone X2. He adds, “Then, one year later, the Holy Grail of bad product naming will be within Apple’s grasp. An iPhone X2S will feature a Roman numeral, a number and a letter, all in one name.” Yep. Good luck with that one, Apple.
Check It Out: The Guy Who Named the iMac Says iPhone Naming Sucks
I think they should just get rid of the numbering system all together. Macs don’t do it. iPods didn’t do it. And just recently they ditched it on the iPads. Just call it iPhone. And go by the years. Works for the auto industry. As far as size goes, just use the screen dimensions like the Macs do.
On one hand he’s right, there is no order or convention to Apple’s naming strategy.
Of course we may just be in a transition from lnumbers and numbers with letters to all roman numerals.
Most importantly though, it really hasnt hurt Apple at heart. If Apple did come out with an iPhone X2S it would sell.
But that said I think the iPhone ExcesS is a silly name. It just leaves them open to too many jokes. Just like the Macintosh SEx would have.
Yes. I remember the days of confusion over which Mac is what because of the lack of consistent naming. I don’t understand why Apple didn’t lay out a naming scheme from the beginning that would have been consistent for future iterations.