up vote 10 down vote favorite
1

Should there be a difference? My proposal is that [mac] relates to hardware, [osx] relates to the software, and [apple] relates to the company specifically.

share
and is the site specifically for mac hardware or does it include other apple hardware (iphone, ipad, time capsule, etc) as well? – Robert S Ciaccio Aug 17 '10 at 19:28
1  
I would assume any hardware. – Josh K Aug 17 '10 at 19:30

4 Answers

up vote 13 down vote

I think that if we have an [apple] tag, it will be used in a way that doesn't add any value. Maybe we can use [apple inc] for questions related to the company, and ban the use of [apple].

share
1  
+1 … everything in Ask Different is, or should be, Apple-related. – Graham Perrin Apr 10 '12 at 8:17
up vote 7 down vote

I agree with KeithB, [apple] is very vague to what it actually refers to in any given situation. [apple inc] is kinda strange, but still better. [mac] is related to hardware questions about all macs. We should of course have [macmini], [imac], etc. for different models. [osx] is regarding the operating system and it's built in functionality, excluding standalone applications like AddressBook, Safari, iCal etc.

As a side note, how about [snow-leopard], [tiger] etc? Is it better or worse than [osx 10.6], [osx 10.5]. And is it possible to alias tags? Like the aforementioned [tiger] <-> [osx 10.4].

share
You can alias tags (tag synonyms) but no one has over 2000 reputation to do this yet. See blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/tag-folksonomy-and-tag-synonyms – Chealion Aug 17 '10 at 23:04
@Chealion: No rep, and not in the top 20 or 100 upvotes. – Josh K Aug 18 '10 at 1:39
I still prefer [apple] for the company. [snow-leopard] => [10.6] are good, though [10.6] should be synonymous with SL. – Josh K Aug 18 '10 at 1:40
I see imac and mac-mini but there are so many different types of each model, I don't find value in that level of detail. – Graham Perrin Apr 10 '12 at 8:21
up vote 4 down vote

I think that yes, they should be a difference.

The moto of the site says "Beta Q&A site for power users of Apple hardware and software".

As they will have questions on iPad, Mac or the company itself, we should make a difference on these tags.

share
up vote -1 down vote

Absolutely, I agree Macintosh is just a brand of hardware made by Apple. That's the way of reality.

What's wrong with using the real-world identifiers? How about: [apple] is the name of the company, [macintosh] or [mac] is the name of the computer line, [ios] is software that runs on the i-devices such as iPhones, iPods and iPads, [macos] or [osx] is the software that runs on the Macintoshes.

This is how it is in the real world and not very complicated at all. You can use multiple tags anyway.

share
apple is too confusing as covers everything on this site and the tag will not be used just for company related questions - anyway this is a very old question look at the tag wikis for how they are used now which is as per @GlennNilsson's answer – Mark Mar 4 at 22:32

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged