At Maxis, we didn't arrive at the totally obvious name The Sims until very late in development.
At first there was the secret development name, Project X, but everybody had a Project X, and we certainly couldn't ship with that.
Then there was Jamie's obvious name, Dollhouse, which was quite descriptive, but boys would hate it.
Then there was Will's quirky name, Super Happy Friends Home, which only the Japanese would love.
Then there was Jim's high minded name, Jefferson, for the pursuit of happiness, but it made everybody think of the sitcom The Jeffersons.
Then there was the legendary perfectly descriptive catchy epic name, that everyone on the team really loved, which we dreamed up together in a brainstorming session when we were all quite stoned, but by the next day we all forgot it, and nobody could ever remember what it was again, although we could all distinctly remember the warm glow of knowing that it was the best possible name in the world, which everyone would love. Those were good times! ;)
But for some reason, during all that time, despite racking our brains, nobody ever though of "The Sims", which is retrospect was a totally obvious name for a continuation of the SimCity franchise focusing on the people in the city. (The original SimCity manual referred to the people in the city as "the Sims," so there was a long standing precedent.)
I have no idea who eventually came up with the name The Sims, and I'm happy with it, but it definitely wasn't the perfect name that everybody forgot. It's lost in the sands of time...
The perfect name reminds me of the Douglas Adams story somewhere in his third Hitchhiker book - about the Reason.
And sometimes, after some of the worst of these outrages,
the Dwellers in the Forest would send a Messenger to
either the Leader of the Princes of the Plains or the
Leader of the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides and demand
to know the reason for this intolerable behavior.
And the Leader, whichever one it was, would take the
Messenger aside and explain the reason to him, slowly and
carefully, and with great attention to the considerable
detail involved.
And the terrible thing was, it was a very good one. It was
very clear, very rational and tough. The Messenger would
hang his head and feel sad and foolish that he had not
realized what a tough and complex place the real world
was, and what difficulties and paradoxes had to be
embraced if one was to live in it.
"Now do you understand?" the Leader would say.
The Messenger would nod dumbly.
"And you see these battles have to take place?"
Another dumb nod.
"And why they have to take place in the Forest, and why it
is in everybody's best interest. the Forest Dwellers
included, that they should?"
"Er ..."
"In the long run."
"Er, yes."
And the Messenger did understand the reason, and he
returned to his people in the Forest. But as he approached
them, as he walked through the Forest and among the trees,
he found that all he could remember of the reason was how
terribly clear the argument had seemed. What it actually
was, he couldn't remember at all.
And this, of course, was a great comfort when next the
Tribesmen and the Princes came hacking and burning their
way through the Forest, killing every Forest Dweller in
their way.
> Then there was the legendary perfectly descriptive catchy epic name, that everyone on the team really loved, which we dreamed up together in a brainstorming session when we were all quite stoned
Have you considered it only seemed legendary because you were all stoned? When I'm drunk every idea seems a good idea...
I wonder if the name would still seem legendary if you guys had remembered it.
LittleBigPlanet, our PS3 game, was (is) called 'ps3test1'. the sequel, LBP2, is... also called ps3test1.
that project really was our first attempt to bring up a devkit, probably with a rotating cube.
the project, and compiled output, on every platform, is called 'pc.elf' (or .vcproj or .exe or whatever)
SIGH
there's an inverse correlation between awesome-ness of directory name and chance-of-shipping, in my experience.
I've gotten asked a lot where the name Miranda IM came from and I honestly have no idea. I was creating a new solution in Visual Studio and I needed a name. I remember it took under 10 minutes to come up with, I was browsing a bunch of name lists and I came across 'Miranda' and I thought that sure is a strange / unusual name, I'll use that. Turns out it's a fairly common name. I still think it's a good name for the product.
I remember when I was working on ACDSee, the original author said, "If I knew it was going to become popular, I would have picked a better name." The company originally made catalog software, and a Co-op student made ACDSee as a side project. It's sustained the company for almost 20 years.
I find just calling it app_number and moving on helps. I used to go in circles with names, until I realized how much time and sanity I was wasting. Spending more time on developing the product helps me understand it's core value better and, consequently, potential names to communicate that value effectively to new users.
I just give projects a plain, descriptive name, not worrying too much at first about using the exact, correct words. I have projects with names like “Boggle word list”, “cost matrix solver”, “def_init-initializer-type DRY enabler”, “Ghost Assistant”, and “recursive spiraling dots animation”. I don’t publish my projects until I’ve worked on them for a while, so I don’t mind if they’re not perfect at first.
I don't get to name many projects.
But when I'm naming procedures I want the name to be self-documenting without being too long.
Frequently I get exasperated and name it blah or sdfbdhfs!
I would guess the code name 'Alexander' came from 'Alexander the Great', who not only traveled a lot, but also conquered, just like Safari was aiming to conquer the Internet. They must have ignored the 'die young' aspect of that connotation.
Safari also has the right feelings associated with it with almost everybody. Some will think "hah, killing elephants", others will think "paying people to help me watch elephants, so that they no longer need or want to kill them", but nobody (nowadays) will associate negative thoughts (exploiting the natives; killing rare animals) with it. And, apparently, there also is a link with surfing the ocean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfin_Safari. I think that may have led to thinking of the name, but I doubt that is strong enough to choose the name.
I don't know - when I first heard the name, 'Safari' made sense to me after a moment of thinking about it. Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, and Safari - all named around the theme of discovery.
If we do not count the typical geek crowd (HN, /. etc.), then I am pretty sure most people go online to do exactly that: go on a safari, see animals (baby animals! cats! cats! dogs! cats!), babies, and Facebook is sort of a safari, allowing you to observe your online friends in their natural habitat. ;)
I've always felt Microsoft has been very good at grabbing very generic, "standard" names: Word, Office, Windows, Internet Explorer, etc. These names become very iconic in and of themselves and they just "feel" like the market leader, whether you are familiar with them or not.
Great story. It shows that doesn't matter if you are Apple or a solo developer, product naming is hard. Actually, as the OP, I find coding easier. Nevertheless, we can't ship products with placeholder names. I have a little brainstorming process that goes like this:
1) List the name of all competitors that made into the business plan; // this is important mainly to avoid problems
2) List of nouns that evoke a basic understanding of the root problem the program tries to solve; // I know it's obvious, but finding a name right here create an instant connection with your target users
3) List all the features that make the program stand out; // Again it's obvious, yet this is a great source of names
4) Mix and match all these these words, throw them into a bucket, and sleep on it for a while;
5) Usually, after some days have passed I come back, and weed out the crapy ones; // and...
6) Work a little more on the rest with a dictionary, if needed go back to 3;
7) Finally, when I have a short list of good names I try to find domain names;
Ours is pretty much like that, with one more step: Google each candidate name. Those that get few hits or hits that are completely unrelated to the problem domain get a +1.
It was a poor choice of name in that it gives no hint as to what the application might actually do.
While on holiday and in need of some internet, a (highly intelligent) friend searched around the local town and could only found a Mac in a hotel lobby. Despite being very motivated she was unable to persuade it to open a browser and eventually gave up and was left wondering how Macs could possibly be described as intuitive or user friendly.
I've read that a few times in places, which is interesting on the face of it as in public the language surrounding Apple products is hyperbolic and overwhelmingly positive, and internally saying "well, it doesn't suck" is high praise. The duality of company presences.
I guess at some point one intellectually reaches a no-return state where due to some Dunning-Kruger corollary you find everything you do sucks to various degrees.
It follows that "it's brilliant" is much less impacting than "it doesn't suck" since the former, while authentic, may feel shallower in the reasoning that led to it.
Product naming can be ridiculously hard. Even if you have something you personally think is clever, everyone else can think you're a dork.
Related anecdotes:
When trying to come up with a name for Firefox (after having two other names rejected due to trademark snafus), a friend of mine sarcastically rattled off a bunch of alternatives using the same prefix as the outgoing "Firebird" on IRC one night. I think it was "Firecrap, Fireturd, Firefox". I stopped him. The consonance was great, and the team loved the name. The rest is history.
At the beginning of Chrome, we had to come up with a project name. Inspired how Netscape did their project naming, we did a vote. The results were truly awful. I think "Goose" was the winner. At this point Linus came in and put us out of our misery, "How about Chrome... it's kind of ironic given the UI design." Everyone agreed that it was much better. That was before we'd written really any code, so it stuck for the entire project. Shortly before launch the marketing folk did a brief exploration, but we threw up all over their suggestions, and Chrome stuck.
I had been a Phoenix user for several months when I heard it had run into problems with the name. When I heard it was going to be called Firefox, I thought it was the most ridiculous name I'd ever heard! Funny, now I really like it.
The weird thing about Safari is that it's simultaneously a niche irrelevance on a minor computing platform, a groundbreaking web browser of major historical import, and the public face of the most important wad of code in play on Earth today.
I've always felt that picking a solid name is one of those things that will never happen while I'm thinking about it intently. Glad to hear it's the same for the big boys too...
'Not only had we gotten very used to calling it that, the string “Alexander” was all over the code and buried in its resources. So the engineering team wasn’t just curious about the real name, they were worried about correctly and completely changing the placeholder name at the last minute.'
Why would you litter a codebase with disparate string literals referring to a "placeholder name" rather than using a single resource file or a single #define?
Resources such as nib files and help files aren't amenable to things like #defines. Filenames and build system metadata fall in to the same cateogry. The source code proper is a different story, but is also trivially updateable via sed or the like.
What makes you think it was string literals? Probably a lot of classes was prefixed with "Alex" or something similar. Folks at Apple, being perfectionists, of course could not live with the code name all over the source :-)
Not sure of the actual origin, but it seems to me that Safari is a reference to "journey", and works with the OS X naming after big cats. Then again it could just make sense in hindsight.
Based on no evidence whatsoever, just an intuition about Jobs, I would not be surprised if the point of reference was Surfin' Safari - the Beach Boys song.
It is free from the negative connotations of a reference to Africa and consistent with the sort of Californian to which Jobs aspired. Apple was funded by a VW microbus after all.
The play on surfing is consistent with Apple's image of how consumers should be oriented to use their products.
I remember when Safari was very buggy in its early versions and some folks within Apple had taken to calling it "So Sorry". I had several bug reports on a web app my company had developed for Apple that turned out to be Safari bugs. They were fixed rather rapidly, which is what would finally convince my contacts that it definitely wasn't a bug in our web app. "So Sorry" they said...
That’s one of those things that make perfect sense to me. I’m mystified in what respect that would not be a fitting icon. It’s certainly better than an “e”.
When you're on a safari in amazonas, that's what you need in order to find your way (well, nowadays a GPS might do wonders, but when the name safari was historically established, there was no gps)
The name Safari is still one of those mystery to me, I like the name, and my guess it properly came from the idea of Navigation -> Compass - > Safari. Although i was expecting a post to truly reveal the mystery behind the reason for such a name.
Safari is a swahili name(Swahili is spoken by people of the East-coast of Africa). It means a journey or an adventure. It could also mean a great undertaking. Steve must have known this from his many journeys.:)
I would think it is more 'did not feel fitting for this story' than 'missed'. He isn't mentioning any other parts they built on either (Cocoa, the Mac OS Unix-based networking code, the font designers for Mac OS system fonts, the GNU project for gcc, K&R's progamming language design, etc)
In the context of the story that is irrelevant, and it is actually not correct. Don Melton started at Apple in the summer of 2001 (the same day I did). At the time of this story they had already been working on Safari for over a year, the point was that in that meeting they realized that Alexander was less than an additional 6 months away from shipping.
Not to discount the work of the kHTML guys, but it was more than a year of work to get from kHTML to Webkit.
A thingie that's mostly white with a blinking stick on it where if you hit the keyboard letters show up, and you can make some letters thicker and some slanted in a weird way.
SimHacker|13 years ago
At first there was the secret development name, Project X, but everybody had a Project X, and we certainly couldn't ship with that.
Then there was Jamie's obvious name, Dollhouse, which was quite descriptive, but boys would hate it.
Then there was Will's quirky name, Super Happy Friends Home, which only the Japanese would love.
Then there was Jim's high minded name, Jefferson, for the pursuit of happiness, but it made everybody think of the sitcom The Jeffersons.
Then there was the legendary perfectly descriptive catchy epic name, that everyone on the team really loved, which we dreamed up together in a brainstorming session when we were all quite stoned, but by the next day we all forgot it, and nobody could ever remember what it was again, although we could all distinctly remember the warm glow of knowing that it was the best possible name in the world, which everyone would love. Those were good times! ;)
But for some reason, during all that time, despite racking our brains, nobody ever though of "The Sims", which is retrospect was a totally obvious name for a continuation of the SimCity franchise focusing on the people in the city. (The original SimCity manual referred to the people in the city as "the Sims," so there was a long standing precedent.)
I have no idea who eventually came up with the name The Sims, and I'm happy with it, but it definitely wasn't the perfect name that everybody forgot. It's lost in the sands of time...
lifeisstillgood|13 years ago
HornThisWay|13 years ago
acheron|13 years ago
"Super Happy Friends Home" is excellent, but yeah, I think "The Sims" worked out for the best. :)
bonobo|13 years ago
Have you considered it only seemed legendary because you were all stoned? When I'm drunk every idea seems a good idea...
I wonder if the name would still seem legendary if you guys had remembered it.
switz|13 years ago
neumann_alfred|13 years ago
?
I just saw a talk by him yesterday where he confirmed what you can read (and see) here, http://www.will-wright.com/willshistory7.php
Not that it has anything to do with your point, but still :P
augustl|13 years ago
rurounijones|13 years ago
"There are only two hard things in computer science. Cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors."
pistoriusp|13 years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_scientists
mm_alex|13 years ago
the project, and compiled output, on every platform, is called 'pc.elf' (or .vcproj or .exe or whatever) SIGH
there's an inverse correlation between awesome-ness of directory name and chance-of-shipping, in my experience.
peteretep|13 years ago
Answer: http://search.cpan.org/search?query=Acme%3A%3AMetaSyntactic&...
FigBug|13 years ago
I remember when I was working on ACDSee, the original author said, "If I knew it was going to become popular, I would have picked a better name." The company originally made catalog software, and a Co-op student made ACDSee as a side project. It's sustained the company for almost 20 years.
quarterto|13 years ago
devopstom|13 years ago
debacle|13 years ago
Pick a language you don't know, and have at it:
"picture site" => "irudi_gune" (basque)
I find that Basque, Portuguese, and Welsh produce very good names.
rooshdi|13 years ago
roryokane|13 years ago
barking|13 years ago
jfoutz|13 years ago
name it something. mv works if you need to change it.
nemoto|13 years ago
For example, in Debian, they take a character name in Toy Story for their codename. In Ubuntu, they take an animal name in alphabetical order.
namank|13 years ago
yen223|13 years ago
"First press the home button"
"Ok"
"Now tap on Safari"
"But I don't want to see animals"
"..."
And that's when I realized why Internet Explorer was so successful.
Someone|13 years ago
That fits it in with the browsers of the time:
I would guess the code name 'Alexander' came from 'Alexander the Great', who not only traveled a lot, but also conquered, just like Safari was aiming to conquer the Internet. They must have ignored the 'die young' aspect of that connotation.Safari also has the right feelings associated with it with almost everybody. Some will think "hah, killing elephants", others will think "paying people to help me watch elephants, so that they no longer need or want to kill them", but nobody (nowadays) will associate negative thoughts (exploiting the natives; killing rare animals) with it. And, apparently, there also is a link with surfing the ocean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfin_Safari. I think that may have led to thinking of the name, but I doubt that is strong enough to choose the name.
zephjc|13 years ago
rmk2|13 years ago
If we do not count the typical geek crowd (HN, /. etc.), then I am pretty sure most people go online to do exactly that: go on a safari, see animals (baby animals! cats! cats! dogs! cats!), babies, and Facebook is sort of a safari, allowing you to observe your online friends in their natural habitat. ;)
city41|13 years ago
namank|13 years ago
Safari is not for one time use.
sbmassey|13 years ago
vacri|13 years ago
bdcravens|13 years ago
Ironic that this was a concern, given the later iPad
donmelton|13 years ago
Digit-Al|13 years ago
unknown|13 years ago
[deleted]
mmariani|13 years ago
1) List the name of all competitors that made into the business plan; // this is important mainly to avoid problems
2) List of nouns that evoke a basic understanding of the root problem the program tries to solve; // I know it's obvious, but finding a name right here create an instant connection with your target users
3) List all the features that make the program stand out; // Again it's obvious, yet this is a great source of names
4) Mix and match all these these words, throw them into a bucket, and sleep on it for a while;
5) Usually, after some days have passed I come back, and weed out the crapy ones; // and...
6) Work a little more on the rest with a dictionary, if needed go back to 3;
7) Finally, when I have a short list of good names I try to find domain names;
8) mkdir <project_name> // or mv <old> <new> :)
How do you go about your process?
henrikschroder|13 years ago
McP|13 years ago
While on holiday and in need of some internet, a (highly intelligent) friend searched around the local town and could only found a Mac in a hotel lobby. Despite being very motivated she was unable to persuade it to open a browser and eventually gave up and was left wondering how Macs could possibly be described as intuitive or user friendly.
eridius|13 years ago
jballanc|13 years ago
nicholassmith|13 years ago
lloeki|13 years ago
I guess at some point one intellectually reaches a no-return state where due to some Dunning-Kruger corollary you find everything you do sucks to various degrees.
It follows that "it's brilliant" is much less impacting than "it doesn't suck" since the former, while authentic, may feel shallower in the reasoning that led to it.
[0]: http://www.mutt.org
bengoodger|13 years ago
Related anecdotes:
When trying to come up with a name for Firefox (after having two other names rejected due to trademark snafus), a friend of mine sarcastically rattled off a bunch of alternatives using the same prefix as the outgoing "Firebird" on IRC one night. I think it was "Firecrap, Fireturd, Firefox". I stopped him. The consonance was great, and the team loved the name. The rest is history.
At the beginning of Chrome, we had to come up with a project name. Inspired how Netscape did their project naming, we did a vote. The results were truly awful. I think "Goose" was the winner. At this point Linus came in and put us out of our misery, "How about Chrome... it's kind of ironic given the UI design." Everyone agreed that it was much better. That was before we'd written really any code, so it stuck for the entire project. Shortly before launch the marketing folk did a brief exploration, but we threw up all over their suggestions, and Chrome stuck.
nacker|13 years ago
When I first heard the name Barack, though... http://rense.com/general84/brck.htm
jpxxx|13 years ago
benzor|13 years ago
Syssiphus|13 years ago
http://www.ibrowse-dev.net/
nikcub|13 years ago
philbo|13 years ago
'Not only had we gotten very used to calling it that, the string “Alexander” was all over the code and buried in its resources. So the engineering team wasn’t just curious about the real name, they were worried about correctly and completely changing the placeholder name at the last minute.'
Why would you litter a codebase with disparate string literals referring to a "placeholder name" rather than using a single resource file or a single #define?
bdash|13 years ago
bni|13 years ago
JGuo|13 years ago
brudgers|13 years ago
It is free from the negative connotations of a reference to Africa and consistent with the sort of Californian to which Jobs aspired. Apple was funded by a VW microbus after all.
The play on surfing is consistent with Apple's image of how consumers should be oriented to use their products.
icodestuff|13 years ago
msgilligan|13 years ago
bluesmoon|13 years ago
I personally codename my projects pffft.
happimess|13 years ago
[1]http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&s...
xsace|13 years ago
melvinmt|13 years ago
gurkendoktor|13 years ago
arrrg|13 years ago
That’s one of those things that make perfect sense to me. I’m mystified in what respect that would not be a fitting icon. It’s certainly better than an “e”.
terhechte|13 years ago
chris_wot|13 years ago
ksec|13 years ago
georgeg|13 years ago
marijn|13 years ago
danielsamuels|13 years ago
hughw|13 years ago
stuaxo|13 years ago
Someone|13 years ago
lgg|13 years ago
Not to discount the work of the kHTML guys, but it was more than a year of work to get from kHTML to Webkit.
RaSoJo|13 years ago
emehrkay|13 years ago
Describe to me a product and I'll name it for you.
leonsp|13 years ago
natem345|13 years ago