In the comments of this post;

“I bet they [Microsoft] think people’s idea of fun on the weekend is sitting around at home wearing company golf shirts and making corporate presentations for their upcoming week at work.” – Brad Whittington

and following a multi-step path from SeatlleDuck, from BBSpot… this little post

Microsoft leaves no doubt what their products are. If they made toilet paper it would be called Butt Wiper.

I think that last quote was meant as a negative comment (ok, so I don’t have any doubt), but I can see this naming issue both ways… if you use a ‘cool’ name, then you basically need a sub-title, some sort of additional text for people to know what you are talking about… Apple might have names like Tiger, but it is really Mac OS X v10.4 … they are exposing their code names as the brand. We have always had code names, and (less often than Apple) we put them out there in the public as well (check out the Longhorn Developer Center) … even Windows XP was following more of this model than the ‘boring’ naming convention people are describing (what does the XP stand for? Being a former D&D player, I immediately assumed Experience Points)… Honestly, I was annoyed when we first came out with the XP ‘brand’, I would have prefered Windows 5.0 or at least Windows 200x, so I guess I should get back home to my exciting weekend of powerpoint building 🙂

One thing’s for sure though, using a cool name really helps the marketing folks; it is easier to build a graphic around a name like Tiger than it is to try and fit Mac OS X v10.4 onto the page.