It’s very clear that a program “for Mac OS X” works with any personal computer Apple sells, because they all have “Mac” in their name. Unfortunately, the flavor of OS X that runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch is officially called “iPhone OS” by Apple, which it implies an incompatibility with the iPod Touch, and any future device that doesn’t have “phone” in the name.
I don’t know a good way to unambiguously say that a program is for any iPhone OS device, without tedious enumeration.
“For iPhone OS” sounds like it excludes the iPod Touch.
“For all models of iPhone and iPod Touch” sounds terrible. It will sound even worse when Apple comes out with other iPhone OS devices (“…for iPhone or iPod Touch or iTablet or iFPGA…”).
Apple could help by renaming “iPhone OS” to “Mobile OS X”, but I don’t see this happening.
I personally lean towards using “for iPhone” in general writing, and clarifying, if necessary, in “systems requirements” fine print. This feels closest to how the press covers iPhone OS applications, and of course it’s how Apple named the OS.
I’d love to hear what you call iPhone OS applications, and why.
I’ve been struggling with this – especially in support emails where I don’t necessarily know what device they are using yet. I’ve found myself just using the verbose version – “iPhone/iPod Touch Device”.
Comment by Michael Kaye — July 19, 2009 @ 9:44 am
Being as explicit as possible for support makes a lot of sense! Like I said, I’m not sure that I’m doing the right thing by trying to use “iPhone” whenever I can.
If there were some way to make a neologism, like “iDevice” popular, that could also be a solution. But that’s something totally out of our hands.
Comment by Vincent Gable — July 20, 2009 @ 2:59 am