Of late, there’s been a rush in the tech industry to rip off Apple. Instead of companies innovating, they’re freaked out at the possibility of being left behind and have therefore decided on a ‘clone and maybe catch up’ mentality. The result: myriad non-Apple iPads, iPhones and MacBook Airs. Oddly, though, one thing many of these companies don’t do is ape Apple’s simple naming conventions. Take, for example, svelte notebooks, now referred to as ‘ultrabooks’. If you want to buy Apple, you get a MacBook Air. Simple. Go Windows, and you’re just as likely to get a PC brand, a possible sub-brand, and then a seemingly random string of numbers and letters, such as the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, the Asus Zenbook UX31, or the Samsung 900X3A.

Perhaps I’ve been using Apple kit too long and my brain has rotted away, but these names don’t strike me as being memorable. They are, of course, a symptom of too much choice. Instead of streamlining output, companies tend to think consumers want an absurdly wide range of choice (spoiler: they don’t—they only think they do), and so provide dozens of alternatives. You end up with something akin to the car industry, where someone will be able to remember the company that makes what they want, and possibly the brand, but that’s it.

There’s evidence that some companies are slowly coming to understand the naming problem, if not the choice one. Samsung’s Galaxy products have reasonably distinct names, even if it’s not obvious which is superior. Does Europa ‘beat’ Apollo or Portal? Apple’s naming conventions may not be perfect, but an iPad 2 is clearly better than an iPad 1, and an iPhone 4S betters a 4, which betters a 3GS (the last of those being Apple’s naming nadir in the iPhone line). But then you nip to the Bada OS page and discover the Wave, Wave525, Wave 533, Wave II, Wave 723, and the Wave 578!

Why does Samsung need six Bada OS devices and 17 Android ones? Why does it feel the need to give them such baffling and unhelpful names? In simplifying the line-up and the names, it would have a better shot at making its devices memorable and less throwaway (although one might argue that’s precisely what Samsung’s going for—throwaway—to keep hardware sales ticking over regularly). It’d also be one aspect of Apple I’d be quite happy to see it—and others—replicate, simply because it makes life easier for consumers.