Tech Goes Boom

Naming Conventions

Now that Apple is moving over to intel chips, it occurred to me that they will have a naming issue on the Powermacs.

The current line of Powermacs and Powerbooks are distinguished by their G5 and G4 monikers along with various specs or release dates. Beyond loosing the “G” naming convention which denotes the generation of the PPC chip, the “power” in powermac comes from the adoption of the PowerPC chip, although the powerbook name was used before the adoption of PPC chips into the laptop line.

Clearly, marketing has some work to do. Apple will most likely stick with the Powerbook and Powermac monikers, although they certainly could switch to an Xmac and Xbook naming scheme to denote the pro line of machines in contrast to the “i” currently in use on their consumer products. They are already using this with the Xserve and Xsan software. I think Apple will probably not do this, wanting to preserve the “X” prefix for enterprise and server related products.

Apple may choose to follow CPU naming conventions and choose names like PowerMac D or Powerbook M and continue to distinguish individual configurations by specs or dates. I think it's unlikely they will work the intel trademark into the product names.

Any rampant speculation about naming conventions guys?