Codename madness

Although I only have my experience at Apple and those of my friends at other companies, but this appears to be the case:

• Most companies use codenames from time to time

• Most companies that do use codenames use them for ultra-super-secret projects

• Most companies that use codenames are to protect leaks to the outside world, not leaks within a company

• Apple is not like most companies

The only thing at Apple that doesn’t have codenames are other codenames. Oh wait, that’s not entirely true since some projects have multiple codenames based on which organization you are in, although this is not super common.

To complicate matters, there are not really resources to translate a codename into what it stands for or vice versa. So it’s fairly anecdotal and many people keep their own cheat sheets.

But early in my career at Apple I had an amusing codename experience in a meeting that I felt summed up the silliness of it all. Since I don’t remember the codenames involved, I’ll make up a mythical product an…