Posted by gpi 4 days ago
"Outlook" / "Outlook Web Access" / "Outlook Web App" / "Outlook.com" / "new Outlook for Windows" / "Outlook (classic)"
.NET: .NET Framework. ASP.NET. .NET Core. Windows .NET Server. Ugh...)
The love of the term "Explorer": "Internet Explorer" / "Windows Explorer" / "File Explorer" / "MSN Explorer"
Similarly is the love of "Defender": "Windows Defender" / "Microsoft Defender" / "Windows Defender Antivirus" / "Windows Firewall" / "Windows Defender Firewall" / "Microsoft AntiSpyware" / "Microsoft Security Essentials" / "System Center Endpoint Protection"
"Messenger" was a term they loved: "MSN Messenger" / "Windows Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products)
Windows 95 shipped with an email client called "Exchange" that could be used peer-to-peer (using a filesystem-based "Microsoft Mail Postoffice"), but there was also the email server platform "Exchange"
"Microsoft Teams" / "New Microsoft Teams" / "Microsoft Teams for Business"
"Microsoft FrontPage" / "Site Server" / "Site Server Commerce Edition" / "Office Server" / "SharePoint Portal Server" / "Windows SharePoint Services" / "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Foundation" / "SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Standard" / "SharePoint Enterprise" / "SharePoint Online" / "SharePoint Designer"
"Office Communicator" / "Microsoft Lync" / "Skype for Business" / "Skype" / "Skype for Business Online" / "Skype for Business for Microsoft 365"
Fairly guffaw-inducing branding, to me, was removing the Remote Desktop Client app and introducing something called "Windows App".
The old "System Management Server" became "System Center" and its family of products.
There's the whole accounting software / ERP world, too:
"Great Plains" / "Dynamics GP" / "Navision" / "Dynamics NAV" / "Solomon" / "Dynamics SL" / "Axapta" / "Dynamics AX" / "Dynamics 365" / "Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations" / "Dynamics 365 Business Central"
(For most guffaws induced, though, there's the Windows 98-era "Critical Update Notification Tool"[0])
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Update...
“Xbox” / “Xbox 360” / “Xbox One” / “Xbox One X” / “Xbox Series S” / “Xbox Series X”
What should we call our third product? -- One. -- Brilliant!
What should we call the fourth product in the series? -- Series. -- Brilliant!
I thought this was the same app/protocol, only more enshittified as time went by.
What Is Copilot Exactly?
But it's absolutely bonkers that that's the same name as the IDE auto-complete integration, and the GitHub agentic worker, and the GitHub chat, and the GitHub reviewer.
It's wildly confusing branding not only because they're identically-named things that both repackage OpenAI's LLMs, but also because they're both ultimately owned by the same company.
I can only assume that the conflicting naming convention was either due to sheer incompetence or because they decided that confusing users was advantageous to them.
Haven't tried it yet but the GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode also seems to integrate Claude, Gemini and other non-OAI stuff
The Claude Code extension for VSCode from Anthropic will use your Claude subscription. But honestly it’s not very good - I use it but only to “open in terminal” (this adds some small quality of life features like awareness it’s in VSC so it opens files in the editor pane next to it).
Larger than the difference between the .Net Framework (that is a framework) and .Net Core (that is a framework)?
The only good "AI" editor that supports Claude Code natively has so far been Zed. It's not PERFECT, but it has been the best experience short of just running Claude Code directly in the CLI.
Copilot does not know either but I'm sure the answer is a much bigger number then anyone would be comfortable with.