Thursday, November 15, 2018

iPhone's Awful Naming Convention

There is a very clear difference in the naming of the iPhone during the Steve Jobs era and the Tim Cook era.

Up to the iPhone 5s, the naming of the iPhone was very simple and clear. iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S. I could order any way and it would be very clear which model is the superior model.

Let's move on. iPhone 5, iPhone 5C, iPhone 5S, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPhone Xs, iPhone Xs Max, iPhone Xr. You can slowly see the naming degenerate, especially with this last year. The introduction of the "Plus" naming makes sense, but many will remember how ridiculous the name "iPhone 6s Plus" sounded when it first released. That was nowhere near where we are today. But the pattern is still there. Number model, S model. The S model is obviously superior to the number model, so evolution is still clear. Apple did change the styling of the S and made it lowercase for some reason.

Then, we just go from iPhone 7 to iPhone 8. No S model. But then, we skip the iPhone 9 entirely, and go to iPhone X (pronounced "iPhone Ten"). Furthermore, the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X were all released in the same year. In addition, there's no iPhone X Plus, so if you wanted the larger iPhone we have in the iPhone Xs Max today, then you'd be out of luck. Now let's move to the twisted present. iPhone Xs, iPhone Xs Max, and iPhone Xr. I cannot bring myself to call it the "iPhone Ten-S" for whatever reason, but that terrible name aside, we randomly drop the "Plus" for "Max" for next to no reason. But now we have the iPhone Xr. The iPhone Xr actually uses a "stylized lowercase R" which makes it look like a capital letter, but it's really lowercase, which is an entirely different can of worms. The iPhone Xr is technically the latest iPhone, so you'd expect it to be superior to the iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max. But it's cheaper. Oh, so it's the budget model? Well, yes and no. The screen is bigger than the iPhone Xs by a considerable amount. There is no sense of any linearity with these iPhones.

There was a time where it was outstandingly clear which iPhone was the best. Back then, you could easily say that iPhone was the best smartphone period. But now, I realize that marketing is the real field that everyone should be pursuing, because now we know some team got paid a lot of money to create the "iPhone Xs Max" name.

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