Motherboards by maxw (CC-BY-NC-ND)
There are many things in life that we just take for granted and rarely think about. The way gadget companies name their products is one of them. I know, not an interesting topic. But I have always wondered about that since I started using my first gadgets a long time ago: video games, personal computers, VCR, cell phones, etc.
Gadget names such as Nokia 5230, TK2000, Asus Eee PC 1015PE, Canon PowerShot A110 IS, Garmin GPSMAP 62St, HP Deskjet F4580 and others really seem like they are supposed to be readable by machines, not humans. They sound too complicated, too techie, too cryptic, and even scary for people who don’t really care about technology itself. Those names are just unnatural for most of us. I know, you might argue that there’s a reason for using those weird sequences of letters and numbers. It doesn’t matter. Those names just don’t make natural sense for most people.
Some companies are doing a better job on naming their products though. Apple, for example, uses human-readable names for all their products. They even keep same name for different generations of the same product e.g. all generations of MacBook is simply called MacBook. HTC and Samsung are getting it right too with their new Android phones – Captivate, Galaxy, Desire, Hero, etc. And there are many others doing it right these days but it’s still quite common to see things like Panasonic TX-P37X20B and Toshiba HDDR320E04EL_CS, unfortunately.
So, if you’re directly involved in the decision of gadget names for your companies, please, give your next product a meaningful and human-friendly name! Let’s make the technology world a bit less scary for everyone.
While I think human-readable names are generally useful, they are sometimes make it as difficult to determine aspects of devices as random strings of numbers and letters. While I know a MacBook is a lower-end laptop than the MacBook Pro, I have no idea whether “MacBook” means the latest mid-2010 model, or the original Core Duo model released in mid-2006 (with significantly lower specifications). Similarly, there is no information about whether the Desire or Hero has higher specifications or is the more recent phone.
I think it is fine to use numbers in your gadget name if it helps distinguish it from earlier models. I know that the iPhone 4 is better than an iPhone 3G, and can assume that that HTC’s G2 is the successor to its G1 (although due to the ability of carriers to set their own model names, there are three phones that have been marketed as the G2: the HTC Magic, the HTC Hero, and the HTC Vision).
The problem is having nice names for crappy products, such as the “LG Bliss” cell phone :-)
I totally agree and have been telling anyone who cares to listen (or doesn’t actively try to escape :P )
Half these names sound like they just took the catalogue code and printed it on the box. Sony’s always been a big offender: how did they reckon things like “SONY Vaio VPC-Z12Z9E/X.SW” would ever roll off the tongue. I mean are you supposed to go into a shop and ask for that? Because i obviously enjoy memorize random strings of letters and numbers.
I’ve always felt part of the ipod’s success is one of the only mp3 players you could remember the name of, ask for in a shop, and talk to your friends about. compare these two conversations:
A: “Hey, i bought this new ipod”
B: “ooo shiny. ipod you say”
vs
A: “hey, i just got this SONY Video Walkman NWZ-E455/B”
B: “huh? you know what, don’t tell me i don’t want to know.”
I have to disagree, the numbers in product names give a sense of relative value. For example, a “BMW 730″ is valued more than a “BMW 530″ as it has a higher number in its name. But how can I differentiate between an “HTC Hero” and an “HTC Legend”? Human readable names don’t form a partially ordered set.
@Germán, the problem of crappy products is another matter :-)
@CB, I wish that was true in all cases. For example, take Nokia phones: they have just released N8 which is supposedly their best product as of today. But they also have recent products called N96, N97, etc. I can list many other examples of how misleading those model numbers can be in terms of relative value.
@Martey, I forgot to mention the use of some version/generation hint in gadget names. I’m definitely not against the use of numbers in gadget names – if they are meaningful to users. iPhone and HTC’s G1/G2 are good examples of a sane use of version hint in their names.
Djonie. What about Falcom? he he he.
BTW, the best name EVER for a software is Dukax. Just brilliant.
You don’t have to use the model number if you don’t want to. When I bought a new TV, I was frustrated when there was no accurate model numbers found in an advertisement, because I wanted to know exactly what I was buying. Some people just buy “a new Panasonic plasma” and don’t worry about cryptic model numbers.
@Vinicius, yeah, our Dukax was a genious piece of software! It’s a pity that the source code got lost…
I kind of agree, but…
like others have pointed out: no one (normal) can say what is the difference between all those android devices from Moto, Samsung & HTC. So it creates confusion as well. And, if the current trend continues, during next year consumer is at least lost as he/she is with long model names because market is filled with fancy names which don’t mean anything…
And Samsung Galaxy is not probably the best example because there is at least Galaxy S, Galaxy 3, Galaxy Apollo, Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Icon, Galaxy I7500, Galaxy I5something, etc. etc. And no one knows if I7500 is actually S or if S is better than 3. Plus of course there’s the US operator specific Epic, Vibrant, Captivate & Fascinate which are all the same phone.
And Nokia is in the middle of transitioning their model names. Imho, the upcoming naming scheme is the clearest of them all (if we exclude companies like Apple who only have one or few products on the market). One letter tells the series, one number tells the level (low-end has small number and 9 is biggest (and there’s no 4 because of China).
I agree gadgets deserve names people can remenber, but at the same time they must have some kind of code that allows people to know the exact specs of that gadget. Such code should not be proeminent, but ought to be written somewhere, like in the battery compartment and in the box, next to the bar code. This way you can Google for that code and find reviews on that exact model.
@Leonardo, I agree that the model code is useful for exact model/specs matching. But, as you said, they shouldn’t be as prominent as the product name. They should be like what ISBN is for books: a handy identifier when you want to be sure to buy an exact edition/release of a product. No one sells books like “Freakonomics 978-0141019017″ after all :-)
Well, it works for some stuff. Take AMD’s graphics cards, for instance. I know what a 5670 is. It’s the upper side of their midrange series-5 cards. Performance is a monotonic function of number, so this makes it much easier than if all the mid-range cards were named Fun, all the upper-range Extreme! and all the low-range Home.
That would seriously suck.
@Roshan, Yeah, I’m talking about end-user-facing gadgets here. Graphics cards are hardware components and the people dealing directly with them are usually tech savvy enough to understand those model codes.