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February 17th, 2010
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iNeedAShorterName

Nate Weiner - Posted in Blog, ,

I really wish someone (probably Apple) would standardize a way to describe iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad apps in one word.

When you talk about apps for other devices you simply say: it’s an Android app, Blackberry app, Mac or Windows app.  You do not have to specifically list all of the devices that the application works on.

You could simply say ‘iPhone (OS) app’, but because this language is specific to a device, it can easily lead to confusion.  The last thing a developer wants is for an iPad user to see there is an iPhone app available and not make the connection they can purchase it for their iPad.  This arguably was less of an issue between the very similar iPhone and iPod Touch, but once the iPad drops into a whole new market, this will be even more confusing for the end user.  This is why you see a lot of the lengthy ‘iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad’ strings when describing an iPhone OS app.

screen-shot-2010-02-17-at-92956-am

screen-shot-2010-02-17-at-123017-pmWhen trying to design a clean and concise layout, it’s simply too wordy, too ugly.  For example, on Read It Later’s home page, I have links to all of the platforms that RIL is available on. You’ll see I have ‘Add to iPhone/iPod’.  I’m not looking forward to squeezing in ‘iPad’.  Same problem with the main navigation at the top where I list the major platforms: ‘Firefox, iPhone, Mobile, All Browsers’.  When designing that I gave up on including iPod, but now that the iPad is imminent, I feel like it will need to be squeezed in there as well.

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Comments (9)


  1. I’ve been pondering this myself, and think something akin to “iDevices” would work nicely.

    February 17th, 2010 WTL

  2. I think we just need general awareness of regular expressions. Available for ‘Apple iP.*’ works for me :-)

    February 18th, 2010 computermacgyver

  3. Of course, you could try to go for some kind of regex, just to confuse all the new users ;)

    iP(hone|(a|o)d)

    February 18th, 2010 GTD Wannabe

  4. How about “AppStore app”?

    February 22nd, 2010 Christopher Bradford

  5. uhh… is iApp taken?

    February 25th, 2010 Goodwill Hunter S.T

  6. Like Goodwill Hunter suggested, I use “iApp” all the time, even as my Read It Later tag for organizing all iPod, iPhone, iPad related items :)

    Sure it could be argued that there is also an “i” in “iMac” which could possibly introduce confusion, but I see it from the POV of the OS, and in turn any software for (desktop) Mac OS X is a “MacApp” and any software for the iPhone OS on the three “iPs,” flanked by the “App” Store is an “iApp.”

    March 10th, 2010 Hale On Earth

  7. I’ve heard apps for the iPhone and iPod touch describes as iTouch apps. That kind of works to include the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch? So I guess something like iTouch OS, or Apple iTouch OS?

    March 15th, 2010 Jono

  8. What do you all think about calling them by their extension… ipa?
    Without speaking the ‘dot’ in ‘.ipa’, an example would be:
    “I have found the Read It Later IPA to be quite useful, especially during my daily commute.”

    Letter capitalization for this identifier would most likely conform to some consistent appearance after it has spread around a bit. It makes sense that its appearance in at least one large well read print publication (Wired Magazine, David Pouge column, etc.) would help solidify it.
    Aiming for something that will be easily read and indicate its relation to an Apple mobile device, it seems suitable to start by writing it as iPA.

    In any case, this post reminded me of the way we routinely read or here ‘executable’ and ‘exe’, or ‘dot exe file’ interchanged with general widespread acceptance and understanding.

    March 16th, 2010 Bryan

  9. How about “iOS app” now that it’s almost released :)

    June 12th, 2010 Tim Nilimaa

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