I'm shocked they didn't stash "defender" in there somehow. I used to joke that one name they'd rebrand the start menu as "defender for application launching" and rebrand the power button as "defender for powering on."

Microsoft's brands are historical markers. There's an era when a new Microsoft product is .NET, and an era when it's Azure, and one where it's 365 etc. If you have a new Doodad, if you say "Microsoft Doodad" the other divisions hate you because that's not their thing. Brand it "Hot Brand Name Unrelated Word" and now you're part of the family even though you have no product purpose and your customers will forever be confused.

"Azure Active Directory" wasn't Active Directory, and who'd have guessed a year ago that "365 Co-pilot" would mean the Office applications in 2026. Yes really.

> Azure Active Directory

At one point in time, before AzureAD got renamed to Entra ID (or is it just Entra now?) they had:

Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory. All three different products.

Copilot is such a dumb brand name. At least to me, it confers that I need to be a pilot and that it requires training to be one.

I just want to be productive, not fly a plane.

Also, the Copilot is “waiting in the wings” to take over your job.

And when you ask it to do something useful the answer usually is “sorry I can’t do that”.

At least the name is honest.

How about "Borland Sidekick" for a brand name?

That's not really what happened...

https://www.theverge.com/tech/856149/microsoft-365-office-re...

tl;dr : the website formerly known as office.com that was a portal for accessing a bunch of stuff changed name to "Microsoft 365" in 2022, and then again more recently (adding the copilot bit).

Edit: Although the horror show that is Microsoft product naming in that area left the door wide open for this confusion.

Replacing Office with Microsoft 365 as the brand is still stupid. I was messing with Windows 11 a while back pre Copilot, and in the start menu was a pre installed spam link for “Microsoft 365 (Office)”. The fact they had to put the old brand in parentheses at the end should have been a hint they’re doing something stupid.

The only mention of the word 'Office' on that page is

'The Microsoft Office app is now Microsoft 365 Copilot'

It is really sad to see MS kill such a behemoth brand for nothing.

The last lines on the page are a FAQ -- "You can find your favorite apps [...] under the Apps section in the left navigation of the Microsoft 365 Copilot web app."

Wow

Except that nobody cares. The Office brand is too large too get killed by Microsoft.

It's already gone. Replaced once with Microsoft 365 and then rapidly and haphazardly by the Copilot name.

Only the domain and SEO artifacts remain.

But no normal person cares. Or do you know somebody that talks about using "Copilot"? Most people even just say "Office" when they mean "MS Office". The brand has entered public use, so that it is not for MS to decide its future.

That is insane. Microsoft Office is probably one of the most recognizable brand names ever. Reminds me of the time when they called everything .NET.

Literally nobody on the planet is worse at naming things than Microsoft.

Apple's not great, but Microsoft is worse.

Nothing about Apple's naming schemes seems immediately rage-inducing. Sure, their stuff is bland, and I think it's stupid how people refer to doing things "on iPhone" instead of "on an iPhone", but otherwise Apple's products are mostly descriptive. Garage Band has to do with music, Pages is a word processor, iCloud is a cloud storage thing, etc.

But even the Labrador licking his own balls that someone else mentioned would be better than Microsoft at naming things. I'm surprised they haven't changed Windows to Microsoft Azure Copilot Platform .NET 365 yet.

Should I get an M4 Max MacBook Pro, or an M4 Pro Macbook Pro? Or a Mac Pro? Or skip the computer altogether and get an iPhone Pro Max?

I mean, c'mon. They are deliberately trying to be confusing.

Use the real product names and that problem largely goes away:

MacBook Pro (M5)

MacBook Pro (M4 Ultra)

MacBook Pro (M4 Pro)

Mac Pro (M2 Ultra)

Once you remember the general rule that Pro costs/does more than the base model, it’s really not that hard to keep track of.

What about max (or is there no "max" in macbook land)? Is ultra better or worse than pro?

The power creep on their flagship device names is pretty bullshit though. Pretty soon we'll have the "iPhone 20 ultra pro max++ sublime retina unlimited"

Every generation the base iPhone becomes a lower and lower tier product.