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Computer Model Codenames


Apple II

  • Apple IIe: Diana, LCA (Low Cost Apple), Super II
  • Apple IIc: E.T. (extraterrestrial), IIb (for book-sized), IIp (for portable), Pippin, VLC (Very Low Cost), Elf, Yoda, Teddy (short for Testing Every Day), Chels, Jason, Lollie, Sherry, Zelda (the children of team members)
  • Apple IIc+: Adam Ant (because the team was adamant about keeping the project alive), Pizza (because of its boxy shape), Propeller (because a team member had a propeller beanie in his office), Raisin (after testers won 2nd place for their California Raisins costumes in an Apple Halloween party)
  • Apple IIgs: Cortland, Phoenix (the project had been brought back to life after being killed), Rambo (when design team was fighting for final approval from the executive staff), Gumby (from an impersonation done at an Apple Halloween parade) Mark Twain (abandoned ROM04 prototype)
  • Apple IIx: Dove, Brooklyn, Golden Gate (referring to the ability to make it a bridge between the Apple II and Mac)

Apple III

  • Apple III: Sarah (after the daughter of chief engineer Wendell Sander)

Lisa

  • Apple Lisa: Lisa was the orginal code-name, supposedly named after Steve Jobs' daughter Lisa Nicole.

Macintosh

  • Macintosh 128k: Macintosh was the original code-name
  • Macintosh 512k: Fat Mac (four times "fatter" memory-wise than the original Mac)
  • Macintosh Plus: Mr. T (maybe of "The A Team" series, maybe Apple's chief scientist Larry Tesler)

Mac SE

  • Macintosh SE: Z^2, Mac ±, PlusPlus, Aladdin, Freeport, Maui, Chablis
  • Macintosh SE/30: Green Jade, Fafnir

    There is also Red Jade, Blue Jade and Gold Jade -- but don't know what they belonged to.

Mac II

  • Mac II: Little Big Mac, Milwaukee (engineer Mike Dhuey's hometown), Ikki (means "bottoms up" in Japanese), Cabernet, Reno (in honor of the slots), Becks, Paris (homage to Jean-Louis Gassée), Uzi, Jonathan
  • Mac IIci: Aurora II, Cobra II, Pacific, Stingray
  • Mac IIcx: Aurora I, Cobra,
    • Atlantic (aborted 16-MHz configuration)
  • Mac IIfx: Stealth, Blackbird, F-16, F-19, Four Square, IIxi, Zone 5, Weed-Whacker
  • Mac IIsi: Oceanic, Ray Ban (as in "the future's so bright, you gotta wear shades"; it shipped to developers with sunglasses), Erickson, Raffica / Raffika
  • Mac IIvx: Brazil
  • Mac IIx: Spock, Stratos

Mac Classic

  • Macintosh Classic: XO (abbreviation for Executive Officer in the armed forces)
  • Mac Classic II: Montana, Apollo
  • Mac Color Classic: Slice

Mac LC

  • Mac LC: Pinball (low-slung case design kinda looks like a pinball machine I guess), Elsie (say L-C), Prism
  • Mac LC II: Foster Farms
  • Mac LC III: Vail, Elsie III (say L-C-3)
  • Mac LC 475: Primus
  • Mac LC 550: Hook 33 (ran at 33 MHz)
  • Mac LC 575: Optimus
  • Mac LC 630: Show & Tell (probably because of its AV and speech capabilities), Crusader
  • Mac TV: Peter Pan, LD50 (as in pharmeceutical dosage of a drug needed to kill half the test sample?)

Quadra

  • Quadra 605: Aladdin, Primus
  • Quadra 610: Speedbump 610 (when Centris 610 was renamed Quadra 610, its speed was increased from 20 MHz to 25 MHz)
  • Quadra 630-638: Crusader, Show Biz, Show & Tell because of its multimedia capabilities)
  • Quadra 650: Speedbump 650 (when Centris 650 was renamed Quadra 650, its speed was increased from 25 MHz to 33 MHz)
  • Quadra 660av: Tempest
  • Quadra 700: Shadow (shadow of 900), Spike (going to spike the NeXTStation), IIce, Evo 200
  • Quadra 800: Fridge, Wombat 33
  • Quadra 840av: Quadra 1000, Cyclone
  • Quadra 900: Darwin, Eclipse (going to eclipse the NeXTStation), IIex, Premise 500
  • Quadra 950: Amazon, Zydeco
  • Quadra 605: Aladdin, ELB (extremely low budget), Primus

Performa

  • Performa 200: Lady Kenmore
  • Performa 47x: Aladdin
  • Performa 550: Hook
  • Performa 600: Brazil 32, Macintosh IIvm (this was the originally planned name, but consumer testing showed users thought "vm" stood for "virtual memory" a feature not available at the time, so the model was changed to Performa 600)
  • Performa 630: Show & Tell
  • Performa 5200: Bongo, Rebound, Transformer
  • Performa 6300-6360: Crusader, Elixir
  • Performa 6400: Instatower (first Performa to use mini-tower casing)

Mac Portable/PowerBook

  • Macintosh Portable: Laguna, Riveria, Malibu, Esprit, Guiness.
    • Backlit configuration: Aruba, Love Shack, Mulligan
  • PowerBook 100: Asahi, Derringer, Rosebud, Classic
  • PowerBook 140: Tim LC (low cost), Tim Lite, Leary, Replacements
  • PowerBook 150: JeDI
  • PowerBook 145: Colt 45
  • PowerBook 145B: Pikes Peak
  • PowerBook 160: Brooks
  • PowerBook 165: Dart LC
  • PowerBook 165c: Monet
  • PowerBook 170: Road Warrior, Tim
  • PowerBook 180: Converse, Dartanian
  • PowerBook 180c: Hokusai (after the Japanese carver Kasushika Hokusai, famous for "The Great Wave" woodblock)
  • PowerBook 190/190c: Omega
  • PowerBook 520/520c: Blackbird LC (low cost)
  • PowerBook 540: Blackbird, SR-71 (the SR-71 Blackbird shared the same slick black color), Spruce Goose (really heavy)
  • PowerBook 1400c: Epic
  • PowerBook 2400c: Comet, Nautilus, Mighty Cat (only for suped up configuration)
  • PowerBook 3400c: Hooper
  • PowerBook 3500: Kanga (possibly after the motherboard configuration of the same name?)
  • PowerBook 5300: M2 (the model of a mountain bike from Specialized Bicycles)
  • PowerBook G3: Wall Street
  • PowerBook G3/350-400: Main Street

PowerBook Duo

  • PB Duo 210/230: DBLite (the lightweight machine was named one night in a club called Das Boot), BOB W (Best Of Both Worlds, it's a lapop that's also a desktop when inserted in a DuoDock/II), Cinnamon (name given out to developers by Developer Technical Support)
  • PB Duo 250: Ansel
  • PB Duo 270c: Escher (after M.C. Escher, famous for his unique art of the 3D world, and one of my favorites)
  • PB Duo 280c: Yeager (after first man to break sound barrier, this PowerBook was the first use the speedy 68k '40 processor)
  • PB 2300 Duo: AJ, Companion?

PowerMac

  • PCI Power Macs: PowerSurge
  • PowerMac LC 5200: Trailblazer, Bongo, Rebound, Transformer
  • PowerMac LC 5400: Excalibur, Chimera
  • PowerMac LC 5420/5500: Phoenix? (these models were charcoal black, like the charred mythical bird, Phoenix)
  • PowerMac 6100/60: Piltdown Man (it was the "missing link" between the Macintosh and the higher-end PowerPC Macs)
  • PowerMac 7100/66: Carl Sagan (probably from the "billions and billions" Apple would make from the machine), BHA (Butt Head Astronomer, referring to Carl Sagan's opposition to the use of his name, Sagan later sued Apple), LAW (Lawyers Are Wimps)
  • PowerMac 7200: Catalyst
  • PowerMac 7500: TNT (not the dynamite, but "The New Tesseract". The defunct Tesseract project was to create a high-end PPC Mac)
  • PowerMac 8100/80: Cold Fusion (complying with the hoax theme of the 6100)
  • PowerMac 8100/110: Flagship
  • PowerMac 8500/120: Nitro
  • PowerMac 9500/120: Tsunami
  • PowerMac 9500/150: Autobahn
  • PowerMac 8600 and 9600: Kansas
  • PowerMac G3: Gossamer
  • PowerMac G3 Pro: PowerExpress
  • PowerMac G3 A-I-O: Artemis

Network/Workgroup Servers

  • Network Server 500: Shiner LE
  • Network Server 700: Shiner HE
  • Workgroup Server 60, 80: Blugu
  • Workgroup Server 95 project: Menagine
  • Workgroup Server 95: Chinook
  • Workgroup Server 6150/60, 8150/80, & 9150/80: Starbucks
  • Workgroup Server 7250/120 & 8550/132: Summit
  • Mac OS X Server: MOSES

Newton MessagePad/eMate

  • eMate 300: Project K, Shay, Schoolbook
  • Newton MessagePad: Newton was the original code name
  • Newton MessagePad 100: Junior, Wedge
  • Newton MessagePad 110: Lindy
  • Newton MessagePad 120: Gelato (because it came in two "flavors", 1MB or 2MB versions)
  • Newton MessagePad 130: Dante (maybe because of the similarities between MP130's luminescent screen technology and Dante's "Inferno")
  • Newton MessagePad 2000: Q (maybe related to the Bond character with the gadgets, the omnipotent character in Star Trek series, or just the letter Q)
  • Newton OS 2.0 print-only handwriting recognizer: Rosetta (As in the Rosetta stone, which helped decipher hieroglyphs)
  • Newton OS 2.0: Dante (same as MP130, maybe because first shipped with that system)

PowerPC projects/processors

  • Apple's 1st RISC project: Jaguar (based on the Motorola 88000 RISC), Tesseract (renamed after PowerPC project began, later cancelled)
  • Apple's 68k-compatible RISC project: Cognac (Named after John Hennessy, a pioneer in RISC technology), Piltdown Man or PDM (the "missing link" between 68k Macs and Tesseract's high-end PowerPC Mac)
  • PowerPC 603ev: Valiant
  • PowerPC 604e: Sirocco
  • PowerPC 604e (revamped): Mach 5
  • PowerPC 620: Trident
  • PowerPC 630: Boxer, Dino
  • PowerPC 740: Arthur
  • PowerPC 750: Typhoon
  • PowerPC Video and Multimedia Extensions (VMX): AltiVec, Desktop 98
  • Quad-processor G4: Desktop 99

Miscellaneous/Other

  • iMac: Tailgate,C1, Columbus (back when it was an NC)
  • Apple Media Player: Columbus
  • 20th Anniversary Mac: Spartacus, Pomona, Smoke & Mirrors
  • Bandai @World: Pippin (another kind of apple)
  • CHRP Mac project: Moccasin, Opus & Bloom County

Other Computers

  • IBM PC: Chess, Acorn
  • IBM PC AT: Bigtop, Salmon
  • NeXT Computer: Big Mac, 3M (because it had a million pixel display, a million bytes of memory, and ran a million instructions per second)
  • Power Computing PowerWave 604 series: TidalWave (maybe because of the similar 9500's code name, Tsunami)
  • Power Computing's CHRP system: Project Grail (as in the Holy Grail of Mac computing)


Created: 08/03/98
Updated: 11/09/02


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