Anil Dash objects to the subtle mockery that Apple throws towards Windows, and I do see his point. It’s yet another sign of “immaturity”, in the same vein of the shit-talking found in the Mac vc PC ads.

But I think its a little overstated. If you can’t take a little joke at your expense, that’s just sad. It’s not your religion. It’s not your ethnic background. It’s just the OS you choose to run.

(And, yeah, while Linux can support SMB shares, the protocol is extraordinarily slow and ugly. If you’re going to run a *nix box, I suggest NFS, which, with the correct software, is supported even in Windows. And if you don’t need Windows at all, then even AFP performs better than SMB in Linux.)

Sure, maybe it’s a sign of “immaturity.” But I think that’s a good thing. God help us if Steve-o sells out to the corporate culture of naming software releases by cryptic two or three letter acronyms like NT or ME or XP. I like the OS X release names. For one thing, it’s not like there are hundreds of Mac OS X variants.

• 10.0 Cheetah
• 10.1 Puma
• 10.2 Jaguar
• 10.3 Panther
• 10.4 Tiger
• 10.5 Leopard

That’s just six releases since 2001.

Compare that to the six variants of Windows Vista:

• Windows Vista Starter
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows Vista Ultimate

Yeah. That’s not confusing at all.

Frankly, I’m fond of the snide attitude against Microsoft, and the corporate culture in general. It’s something that Apple and the Open Source movement have in common.

I first encountered the phenomenon of weird release names back when I started playing with Linux. The distro I used the most was Red Hat, from version 6.0 to Fedora Core 7.

• 6.0 Hedwig
• 6.1 Cartman
• 6.2 Zoot
• 7.0 Guinness
• 7.1 Seawolf
• 7.2 Enigma
• 7.3 Valhalla
• 8.0 Psyche
• 9.0 Shrike
• Fedora Core 1 Yarrow
• Fedora Core 2 Tettnang
• Fedora Core 3 Heidelberg
• Fedora Core 4 Stentz
• Fedora Core 5 Bordeaux
• Fedora Core 6 Zod
• Fedora Core 7 Moonshine

The most popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu, uses a similarly obscure but evocative naming scheme:

• 6.06.1 Dapper Drake
• 6.10 Edgy Eft
• 7.04 Feisty Fawn
• 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

Now, bear in mind, Apple’s main target demographic is not the musty corporate halls of Wall Street or the confines of the IRS. (With regards to Red Hat, their Enterprise releases are more sedately named.) The kind of corporations that probably use Macs make movies or publish magazines, and even more users work for medium-to-small design shops. The cultures of these places don’t necessarily place a lot of importance on what the suits might call “maturity.” A great number of us just like using a more human OS that actually functions, and if the OS makers want to have their little joke, who cares? We’re physicians, teachers, union organizers, students, lawyers, scientists. Our lives are not predicated on the newest IT buzzword, and if we actually recognize what a BSOD looks like, you only have Microsoft to blame for making it such a familiar sight.