Okay, we all know that when Steve Jobs retook the helm at Apple, the whole product line was a big stinking mess. It's not that the products themselves were particularly bad (well, okay, the Power Mac 4400 belongs in the Apple Hall of Shame), but they revealed a certain lack of direction. Consider, for example, the actual names of the products at the time: Apple gave every product a number, which told potential buyers absolutely nothing about the Mac itself. It wasn't related to clock speed, disk size, or any aspect of the computer other than the chassis type-- and did Apple really expect customers to know that a 7x00 Mac used a desktop enclosure, while an 8x00 was a minitower? Worse yet, you couldn't even assume that a higher number equalled a better or newer computer! The 7600 was an incremental improvement over the 7500, but the next release in that series was the 7300. It was enough to make any semi-logical being stick a fork in the nearest electrical outlet.

Then came Mighty Steve, with his grand plan to simplify things. And now we're much better off-- first of all, Macs have easy-to-remember, highly marketable names instead of numbers. Better yet, those names actually indicate who should buy the product (Power for pros, i for consumers) and whether you'd stick it on your desk or throw it in your bag (Mac for desktop, Book for portable). Simple, right? Easy. Fun for the whole family. Until Apple started shipping later versions of all those products, and then all hell broke loose. We've had the PowerBook G3, the PowerBook G3 Series, and the PowerBook G3 (bronze keyboard.) There's the Power Macintosh G3 and the Power Macintosh G3 (blue and white). And iMacs are the worst of all-- there's the original Bondi models, which came in revisions A and B. There are the original fruit-flavored ones, commonly referred to as revisions C and D, but more properly called the iMac/266 and the iMac/333. And now the "Kihei" iMacs are out, and there are three of those: the iMac/350, the iMac/400 DV, and the iMac DV Special Edition. We've got our forks ready; now where's that outlet?

And so we're intrigued by Mac OS Rumors' report that Apple is now considering moving to a "model year" strategy in order to differentiate the various incarnations of the same product. If the rumor is true, then the next PowerBook G3, for example, may be emblazoned with the title of "PowerBook G3 2000." Sure, the numbers are back, but at least they mean something obvious to the average buyer, so we're in favor of such a move. Plus we think it'd be fun to watch Mac dealers start morphing into car dealership mode, with "year-end model clearances" and the like. A word of advice, though: don't spring for the rustproof undercoating on your next PowerBook, no matter how hard the salesman sells it-- it's a rip-off.