Product naming rant
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@asdf said in Intel releases the X299 lineup:
@anonymous234 said in Intel releases the X299 lineup:
Some day I'll understand what all these numbers mean. But it is not this day.
I am 99% sure this confusion is intentional.
I'm sure it is.
Non-descriptive naming is a major pet peeve of mine actually. Or rather, the fact that it's fucking everywhere.
I get that CPUs are actually complicated and it might make sense here because most users don't usually see it and all that. But when you go to a consumer store and everything is "HP 15-AY117NS", "Asus F540SA-XX445T", "Acer ES1-523-237" (these are actual laptop names btw).
And of course because they all have fucking HUNDREDS of product lines changing every few months, and each country has their own variations, and each product has 4 or 5 small variations that change a single letter in the name, and THE WHOLE THING IS NOT DOCUMENTED ANYWHERE because the fucking website only shows you 4 models and everything else gets "un-personed". Aghhhh.
Is there a point to that? Does confusing your customers actually make more sales, or are their marketing people just terribly incompetent?
Look, it's not that hard. First you find a brand name that's as descriptive as you can, while still being unique: "iPhone", "Surface", "ThinkPad", "Asus Transformer", they all work fine. As long as you stick with the name. The name must not be changed as long as the product line exists. Now you combine the product line name, a number or year, possibly a physical characteristic of the product ("11 inch", "21 inch") and then you can have a few variations for each product ("pro", "lite").
iPhone 4, iPhone 5, iPhone 6. MacBook 2014, MacBook 2015, MacBook 2016. MacBook Air 13-inch, MacBook Pro 13-inch. Surface Pro 2, Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, Surface Laptop. See? Not that hard.
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@anonymous234 This is a problem car manufacturers had solved pretty much from the invention of the motor car. Computer (parts) makers could learn a lot from them.
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@anonymous234 said in Product naming rant:
iPhone 4, iPhone 5, iPhone 6
What about the iPhone 4s/5s/6s ?
You know the s is standing for $, where they extract more money from suckers selling them the same model with different branding
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@TimeBandit said in Product naming rant:
@anonymous234 said in Product naming rant:
iPhone 4, iPhone 5, iPhone 6
What about the iPhone 4s/5s/6s ?
You know the s is standing for $, where they extract more money from suckers selling them the same model with different branding
Haha, no.
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@anonymous234 this actually one of the reasons why apple can charge more for their hardware: because they make it easy to buy. If a person buys from Apple, they know it's going to be easy to upgrade. They'll have a handful of models to choose from and it'll be easy to differentiate. The same thing goes for the Surface line.
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@anonymous234 said in Product naming rant:
iPhone 4, iPhone 5, iPhone 6. MacBook 2014, MacBook 2015, MacBook 2016. MacBook Air 13-inch, MacBook Pro 13-inch. Surface Pro 2, Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, Surface Laptop. See? Not that hard.
All I can think of is how fucking hard it was to describe to another person what model of iPod you had. "Generation 4, gen 5, gen 5 with HD, gen 3 with color screen", etc. Even if you were physically holding it in your hand, there was nothing identifying what accessories were sized for it. It was ludicrous.
You can get too simple.
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Also, if you have families of products that more or less do the same thing but with different increasing qualities (or amount of features, or size or whatever), name them in a way that your customers can actually guess which is which!
Which one is the budget-level product, is that "premium", "luxury", "deluxe", "platinum", "prestige"?
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@kt_ said in Product naming rant:
If a person buys from Apple, they know it's going to be easy to upgrade.
They also know that 3 weeks after buying their speakers with iPod/iPhone dock, Apple will change the docking connector and fuck them over entirely.
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@TimeBandit said in Product naming rant:
What about the iPhone 4s/5s/6s ?
Actually not a bad extension on the theme. They generally have the same looks but new features (4s introduced Siri, 5s was the fingerprint scanner, 6s had that thing where you press harder to right click)
If you want the best iPhone, get the highest number, with an s after if available. It's been muddied a bit more recently with the Plus models but that's still clearly the more expensive one than the non-plus one.
Samsung are OK at this, as long as you know that Galaxy S and Note are the good ones, and that a Note is better than an S with the same number. It was worse when the Note N was better than the S N+1, and if you're not looking for the flagship it's a lot more confusing, but you can't necessarily give Apple credit there since their approach to non flagships is to keep selling old phones rather than having lower product lines.
Say what you want about Apple (and I've said a lot about them over the years), but they're pretty good on marketing
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@blakeyrat said in Product naming rant:
@anonymous234 said in Product naming rant:
iPhone 4, iPhone 5, iPhone 6. MacBook 2014, MacBook 2015, MacBook 2016. MacBook Air 13-inch, MacBook Pro 13-inch. Surface Pro 2, Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, Surface Laptop. See? Not that hard.
All I can think of is how fucking hard it was to describe to another person what model of iPod you had. "Generation 4, gen 5, gen 5 with HD, gen 3 with 3" screen", etc. It was ludicrous.
You can get too simple.
This is actually what google started to do right with the Nexus line. After experimenting with One, S, Galaxy Something they settled on 4,5,6. What I didn't like is that the new 5 was 5x while 6 was 6P, this could've been handled better, though for the actual users maybe it was clearer. But it was a good move nonetheless.
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@Jaloopa said in Product naming rant:
@TimeBandit said in Product naming rant:
What about the iPhone 4s/5s/6s ?
Actually not a bad extension on the theme. They generally have the same looks but new features (4s introduced Siri,
And lacked the antenna bug!
5s was the fingerprint scanner, 6s had that thing where you press harder to right click)
And a new processor, more RAM, Live Photos.
If you want the best iPhone, get the highest number, with an s after if available. It's been muddied a bit more recently with the Plus models but that's still clearly the more expensive one than the non-plus one.
It all got muddled because users' requirements changed and they started to want products of different size. That's where the SE model comes from. (Which really was a Special Edition, it didn't get a follow up).
Samsung are OK at this, as long as you know that Galaxy S and Note are the good ones, and that a Note is better than an S with the same number. It was worse when the Note N was better than the S N+1
That's actually similar to the iPhone/iPhone Plus distinction that Apple has going on.
Say what you want about Apple (and I've said a lot about them over the years), but they're pretty good on marketing
I'd even venture a claim that they're unparalleled. In part it's because of their target customer, it's easier to market only premium models. Still, I don't think anyone's better.
(Though I could be wrong).
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@blakeyrat said in Product naming rant:
@kt_ said in Product naming rant:
If a person buys from Apple, they know it's going to be easy to upgrade.
They also know that 3 weeks after buying their speakers with iPod/iPhone dock, Apple will change the docking connector and fuck them over entirely.
Don't forget about human-cent-iPad!
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@kt_ said in Product naming rant:
5s was the fingerprint scanner, 6s had that thing where you press harder to right click)
more RAM
Not totally true
4 and 4s: 512meg RAM
5 and 5s: 1gb RAM
6 was 1gb, 6s was 2gb.
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@RaceProUK said in Product naming rant:
This is a problem car manufacturers had solved pretty much from the invention of the motor car.
Whaaa?
Even up until the late 90s you could custom order cars with basically any combination of features the factory could physically fit on the car. My grandpa ordered a custom Audi A4 with an engine option that wasn't "officially" supported in the A4 as late as 1998.
It's only recently that cars have become less modular, as (for example) auto-parking and collision avoidance requires the physical placement of micro-radars on the frame, so all cars with micro-radars have those features and it's impossible to order a car with one micro-radar-enabled feature and not another.
(Although we're reaching the point where those micro-radars are so cheap they might just start putting them on EVERY car and do software upgrades, a'la Tesla.)
Plus the sheer combinatorics of modern cars has to be a bit daunting, yes?
Look at the Ford Fusion:
Engine Options: normal, EcoBoost, Hybrid, Plug-In Hybrid
Trim Options: S, SE, Sport, Titanium, Platinum
Wheel Options:
Drive train options: FWD, AWD (but AWD isn't available on the hybrid or plug-in hybrid.)
In practice, any repair shop is going to have to treat a random Ford Fusion that arrives on their premises as a modular entity. The service manual's gonna have a lot of pages that start with sentences like, "if the vehicle is equipped with automatic lane-following, then turn to page X instead."
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After using all letters of the alphabet, Samsung started combining it with words like Mini, Zoom, Active, etc.
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@anonymous234 said in Product naming rant:
I get that CPUs are actually complicated and it might make sense here because most users don't usually see it and all that. But when you go to a consumer store and everything is "HP 15-AY117NS", "Asus F540SA-XX445T", "Acer ES1-523-237" (these are actual laptop names btw).
Is there a point to that? Does confusing your customers actually make more sales, or are their marketing people just terribly incompetent?
It allows retailers to proudly proclaim that they'll refund you the difference if you find the same make cheaper at another retailer: What they don't tell you is that they're the only one who sell a Brand® Model 12345C™ because that make was created specifically for them; go to a different retailer and you'll find a Brand® Model 12345D™ instead.
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@blakeyrat said in Product naming rant:
Plus the sheer combinatorics of modern cars has to be a bit daunting, yes?
Yeah, I don't see a good solution to all of this. The laptop example from the OP, for instance...how do you give anything meaningful to each of the combinations? Why would you care? You can't keep track of all that so you're going to have to look at the specs anyways.
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@blakeyrat said in Product naming rant:
Even up until the late 90s you could custom order cars with basically any combination of features the factory could physically fit on the car.
I'm talking about the standard trim levels, not optional or custom extras.
@blakeyrat said in Product naming rant:
Plus the sheer combinatorics of modern cars has to be a bit daunting, yes?
No, not really. Based on your lists, that's four decisions. Hardly an episode of Mastermind ;)
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@TimeBandit said in Product naming rant:
@anonymous234 said in Product naming rant:
iPhone 4, iPhone 5, iPhone 6
What about the iPhone 4s/5s/6s ?
You know the s is standing for $, where they extract more money from suckers selling them the same model with different branding
I always saw "iPhone 4s" as "iPhone 4.5"...newer than the 4, older than the 5.
While I used iPhones and MacBooks as an example, they have problems too. Apple doesn't call them "MacBook 2015" and "Macbook 2016", they call them all "MacBook" and it gets confusing as hell (same with iPods, iPads, etc.). The point was this is how they should be named.
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@kt_ said in Product naming rant:
This is actually what google started to do right with the Nexus line. After experimenting with One, S, Galaxy Something they settled on 4,5,6. What I didn't like is that the new 5 was 5x while 6 was 6P, this could've been handled better, though for the actual users maybe it was clearer. But it was a good move nonetheless.
The Nexus 5, Nexus 7, Nexus 9 and Nexus 10 are named that way because that's their screen size in inches.
It's pretty clever, provided you only intend to have one generation of each kind of product. It's not very intuitive that version 9 comes after 10.
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@anonymous234 said in Product naming rant:
While I used iPhones and MacBooks as an example, they have problems too. Apple doesn't call them "MacBook 2015" and "Macbook 2016", they call them all "MacBook" and it gets confusing as hell (same with iPods, iPads, etc.). The point was this is how they should be named.
While MacBooks aren't identified at the point-of-sale like that, they do name them like that. (Since you can only buy the newest one, there's little point in giving the year at that point. It displays the details in the About This Mac screen, or you can look it up based on the serial number. Just like an iPhone.)
For iPods and iPads, they're numbered sequentially within each form factor. Sure, they could use years instead, but is that really a substantive difference?
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@RaceProUK said in Product naming rant:
No, not really. Based on your lists, that's four decisions.
Well adding the wheel options was glib, but it's 4 (engine choices) * 5 (trim levels) * 2 (AWD/FWD) choices. Combinations in the dozens.
That's still way more than most products in the IT world. Acer's run the Aspire S7 model for like 6 years. In the entire time the Aspire S7 existed, it's had 5 distinct models, judging from its support page. That's... not really that much. The Aspire S7 has existed longer than the Ford Fusion (2013 redesign) and has fewer models than the Fusion did on day one.
So to sum up: your example is crap, car makers aren't better at making simple model lines, and you should feel bad about yourself basically all the time.
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@remi said in Product naming rant:
Also, if you have families of products that more or less do the same thing but with different increasing qualities (or amount of features, or size or whatever), name them in a way that your customers can actually guess which is which!
Which one is the budget-level product, is that "premium", "luxury", "deluxe", "platinum", "prestige"?
Yes, this is a very common problem.
Marketing never allows 3 versions of the product to be called "cheap", "normal" and "premium". They'll call them "ultimate premium the best", "super ultimate premium even better", and "hyper ultimate premium the absolute best ever".
Or for a real example: USB Full Speed, High Speed, SuperSpeed and SuperSpeed+ (though that's a case of chronological progression, not price difference).
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@anonymous234 said in Product naming rant:
It's not very intuitive that version 9 comes after 10.
Plus there was the difference between Nexus 7 (2012 model) and Nexus 7 (2013 model) which was a bit confusing for support. Other than that, though.
ETA: Oh yeah, and Wi-Fi vs. LTE; same with iPads. So basically, TL;DR is everyone has this problem, but some have it more than others, I suppose.
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@heterodox Yes, but at least you can look at a chart, be given a "Nexus 7 (2013)" and "Nexus 7 (2012)" and make sense of it.
Whereas you're somewhat fucked if you're looking at "Printer OMGWTFBBQ2XYZ!" versus "Printer OMGWTFWHARRBBQ!" versus "Printer OMGLOLCAT!"
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@Rhywden said in Product naming rant:
Whereas you're somewhat fucked if you're looking at "Printer OMGWTFBBQ2XYZ!" versus "Printer OMGWTFWHARRBBQ!" versus "Printer OMGLOLCAT!"
Printer OMGWTFWHARRBBQ! is the hottest one
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@TimeBandit said in Product naming rant:
@Rhywden said in Product naming rant:
Whereas you're somewhat fucked if you're looking at "Printer OMGWTFBBQ2XYZ!" versus "Printer OMGWTFWHARRBBQ!" versus "Printer OMGLOLCAT!"
Printer OMGWTFWHARRBBQ! is the hottest one
Is that because people go Office Space on it with
?
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@anonymous234 said in Product naming rant:
@remi said in Product naming rant:
Also, if you have families of products that more or less do the same thing but with different increasing qualities (or amount of features, or size or whatever), name them in a way that your customers can actually guess which is which!
Which one is the budget-level product, is that "premium", "luxury", "deluxe", "platinum", "prestige"?
Yes, this is a very common problem.
Marketing never allows 3 versions of the product to be called "cheap", "normal" and "premium". They'll call them "ultimate premium the best", "super ultimate premium even better", and "hyper ultimate premium the absolute best ever".
Or for a real example: USB Full Speed, High Speed, SuperSpeed and SuperSpeed+ (though that's a case of chronological progression, not price difference).
Or Macbook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro. Here, solved that one for you.
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@blakeyrat said in Product naming rant:
Look at the Ford Fusion
That's not all of it, either. There was also a Ford Fusion sold in Europe till 2012, and its production overlapped with the US Ford Fusion (which seems to be roughly equivalent to European Ford Mondeo - in class I mean, not necessarily in hardware).
The European Fusion looks like this:
I remember being very confused some time ago when you were talking about your in some thread and I kept picturing the above abomination and thinking it was some kind of joke because what you were saying was nowhere near of my experience.
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@blek said in Product naming rant:
The European Fusion looks like this:
Is that car punishment from an evil Aztec god?
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@blakeyrat I think that's Pontiac Aztek. This one is a punishment from Radegast.
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@blakeyrat said in Product naming rant:
In practice, any repair shop is going to have to treat a random Ford Fusion that arrives on their premises as a modular entity. The service manual's gonna have a lot of pages that start with sentences like, "if the vehicle is equipped with automatic lane-following, then turn to page X instead."
Different audience, though: the car-buying public buys a Ford Fusion with features A, B, and C while the repair shop gets in that car, plugs it into the computer and finds out it’s a Ford Fusion model 262.70.582.6. (Problems will likely occur if someone swaps out the computer for a new one, of course.)
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@heterodox said in Product naming rant:
@anonymous234 said in Product naming rant:
It's not very intuitive that version 9 comes after 10.
Plus there was the difference between Nexus 7 (2012 model) and Nexus 7 (2013 model) which was a bit confusing for support. Other than that, though.
ETA: Oh yeah, and Wi-Fi vs. LTE; same with iPads. So basically, TL;DR is everyone has this problem, but some have it more than others, I suppose.
I think the issue is not having a well-defined product line. The Nexus 7 had 2 "versions", the 2012 and 2013 model, and had several variations within that. The main specs were the same within versions, they only differed by features (LTE, wifi, storage space) iDevices are the same way. The issue with these unnamed, or generically named lines is that there's no real way to tell the difference between the Acer Aspire (Model FHWI72771-HGS), and the Acer Aspire (Model GHHS17717-JJK), despite one being a netbook and one being a high-end Ultrabook. The only way to tell the difference is to memorize the product number or look at the specs, defeating the purpose of a primary key entirely.
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@anonymous234 said in Product naming rant:
I get that CPUs are actually complicated and it might make sense here because most users don't usually see it and all that. But when you go to a consumer store and everything is "HP 15-AY117NS", "Asus F540SA-XX445T", "Acer ES1-523-237" (these are actual laptop names btw).
And of course because they all have fucking HUNDREDS of product lines changing every few months, and each country has their own variations, and each product has 4 or 5 small variations that change a single letter in the name, and THE WHOLE THING IS NOT DOCUMENTED ANYWHERE because the fucking website only shows you 4 models and everything else gets "un-personed". Aghhhh.This is deliberate, of course, to stop you actually comparing what you've been offered with anything else, so that you can't figure out how raw a deal you're getting or decide whether you're going to get hosed on the build quality. (Protip: expect pain there anyway. Saves time.)
Or that's my theory.
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@blakeyrat said in Product naming rant:
@RaceProUK said in Product naming rant:
No, not really. Based on your lists, that's four decisions.
Well adding the wheel options was glib, but it's 4 (engine choices) * 5 (trim levels) * 2 (AWD/FWD) choices. Combinations in the dozens.
That's still way more than most products in the IT world. Acer's run the Aspire S7 model for like 6 years. In the entire time the Aspire S7 existed, it's had 5 distinct models, judging from its support page. That's... not really that much. The Aspire S7 has existed longer than the Ford Fusion (2013 redesign) and has fewer models than the Fusion did on day one.
So to sum up: your example is crap, car makers aren't better at making simple model lines, and you should feel bad about yourself basically all the time.
Actually, car manufacturers have been slimming down options substantially at dealership request.
On a lot of lines, there are only 3 variables from the factory: Trim, paint (which together imply a specific interior and wheel choice) and base package.
Everything else is installed at the dealership. This makes it easier for dealers to actually move their in-stock inventory versus making endless special orders or horse trading with other dealers for a particularly desirable configuration. And it ensures certified pre owned programs will have a fairly consistent inventory.
Want different wheels? They'll change them. Fog lights on the base model? 15 minutes in the shop.
Hell, last new car I bought, I got a rare bodywork option. Not one was ever produced from the factory like that except press units. They had to order the part from Japan and I had to bring the car back to get it fitted.
The production lines are still fully capable of special orders and odd combinations, but dealers HATE IT.
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Dell monitors tend to be like that. The first two digits are the size and the second two are the year
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@blakeyrat I am working at an auto manufacturer at this exact problem. There is a lot of work underway across the whole industry to reduce the complexity.One of the problems is simply that there are so many parts, that they cannot be fitted in the factory floor. Even with just in time delivery, a few parts have to be placed on the floor, and when there are 3425235 possible variants, even the biggest floor gets cramped. Plus, every part has to be designed, tested etc. which leads to very high up-front costs, even if you never build a part at all.
Additionally, customers get mad if they have to choose between meaningless variants. Also, there are some combinations, which look perfectly valid to an engineer, but no customers buy them - e.g. nobody buys a car which has a lane departure warning system, but no speed control, or at least it's so uncommon that you will annoy ~2 customers worldwide if you stop building this variant.
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@HdS said in Product naming rant:
e.g. nobody buys a car which has a lane departure warning system, but no speed control,
That's interesting, I'd assume both of those were tied together because they both require the rangefinder/camera towards the top of the windshield. Once that part's in place, it's dumb to offer one feature and not the other.
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@Weng said in Product naming rant:
@blakeyrat said in Product naming rant:
@RaceProUK said in Product naming rant:
No, not really. Based on your lists, that's four decisions.
Well adding the wheel options was glib, but it's 4 (engine choices) * 5 (trim levels) * 2 (AWD/FWD) choices. Combinations in the dozens.
That's still way more than most products in the IT world. Acer's run the Aspire S7 model for like 6 years. In the entire time the Aspire S7 existed, it's had 5 distinct models, judging from its support page. That's... not really that much. The Aspire S7 has existed longer than the Ford Fusion (2013 redesign) and has fewer models than the Fusion did on day one.
So to sum up: your example is crap, car makers aren't better at making simple model lines, and you should feel bad about yourself basically all the time.
Actually, car manufacturers have been slimming down options substantially at dealership request.
On a lot of lines, there are only 3 variables from the factory: Trim, paint (which together imply a specific interior and wheel choice) and base package.
Everything else is installed at the dealership. This makes it easier for dealers to actually move their in-stock inventory versus making endless special orders or horse trading with other dealers for a particularly desirable configuration. And it ensures certified pre owned programs will have a fairly consistent inventory.
Want different wheels? They'll change them. Fog lights on the base model? 15 minutes in the shop.
Hell, last new car I bought, I got a rare bodywork option. Not one was ever produced from the factory like that except press units. They had to order the part from Japan and I had to bring the car back to get it fitted.
The production lines are still fully capable of special orders and odd combinations, but dealers HATE IT.
That solves the problem for the dealer and makes a lot of sense but it doesn't change anything from the consumer's perspective.
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@blakeyrat said in Product naming rant:
@HdS said in Product naming rant:
e.g. nobody buys a car which has a lane departure warning system, but no speed control,
That's interesting, I'd assume both of those were tied together because they both require the rangefinder/camera towards the top of the windshield. Once that part's in place, it's dumb to offer one feature and not the other.
Speed control has been around well before there was any sort of trajectory control, so I would say that it probably doesn't need any sort of camera (probably just monitor the speed-o-meter, essentially). Not that it cannot use it if there is one, but it can probably exist without cameras.
Unless you're thinking speed control as in automatically adjusting your speed to the car in front? In which case I agree with you.
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@remi said in Product naming rant:
Unless you're thinking speed control as in automatically adjusting your speed to the car in front?
Which would be radar-guided cruise control, which also doesn't require a camera
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@RaceProUK said in Product naming rant:
@remi said in Product naming rant:
Unless you're thinking speed control as in automatically adjusting your speed to the car in front?
Which would be radar-guided cruise control, which also doesn't require a camera
Good point. But @blakeyrat 's point was that the equipement required for that can be shared with other functions. So this might not be lane control (assuming lane control only uses cameras, which I doubt, it probably also uses radars?) but assisted parking or whatever, but still, it makes sense to bundle all these features together since they use the same hardware.
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@remi said in Product naming rant:
it makes sense to bundle all these features together since they use the same hardware.
Or do one set of charges for the hardware and another set for the software.
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@dkf said in Product naming rant:
@remi said in Product naming rant:
it makes sense to bundle all these features together since they use the same hardware.
Or do one set of charges for the hardware and another set for the software.
I've never seen a car where you have an option for "sensors" and another for "stuff that uses sensors". I guess that (at least if presented this way) it would be hard to make it understandable for clients.
Although there are quite often "packs" of options where one pack requires another pack, and while the packs contain more than the sensors (they're usually bundled with useless stuff, like for TV channels...), it probably follows that logic: the "basic" pack is sensors + 1 application, the "advanced" pack is the other applications.
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Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows 8
Windows 10
http://i.imgur.com/aEoYqZW.png
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@El_Heffe said in Product naming rant:
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows NT 4
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows 8
Windows 10FTFY :P
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@RaceProUK you forgot NT 3.51.
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@Arantor said in Product naming rant:
@RaceProUK you forgot NT 3.51.
I also forgot the very first version of Windows NT which was called Windows NT 3.1
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@El_Heffe Windows 1.0 and 2.0 also exist
List of Microsoft Windows versions - Wikipedia
