Sitting on my desk is an overpriced peice of plastic - a replacement Magura cover for a friend of mine. Its price, though, is not what makes it unusual. Its branding, however, is.
I don’t usually give this kind of stuff thought but what on earth does HS11/HS33 stand for? For that matter, what’s so special about the letters ‘SLX’ or ‘MT’. Do these letters even stand for anything are are they just for show?
Think about it, when was the last time you saw a car called a string of letters and numbers instead of a word and maybe a model number (E.G. Volvo XC60).
Model numbers are more useful than random names. If not anything else, you can assume they are in some kind of order. And then you can always ask (the manufacturer) what the letters stand for.
Like computer acronyms, while they are occasionally instructive, often they don’t help in comprehending what the thing does.
Anybody know what TWAIN (the common scanner interface) stands for?
In my research all I was ever able to come up with was “Technology Without An Interesting Name”.
This is kind of off-topic but here’s what I found:
So what does TWAIN really stand for? According to The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing and substantiated by the TWAIN Working Group’s official Web site, it’s not an acronym at all:
The word TWAIN is from Kipling’s “The Ballad of East and West” - “…and never the twain shall meet…”, reflecting the difficulty, at the time, of connecting scanners and personal computers. It was up-cased to TWAIN to make it more distinctive. This led people to believe it was an acronym, and then to a contest to come up with an expansion. None were selected, but the entry “Technology Without An Interesting Name” continues to haunt the standard.
-The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, Editor Denis Howe
Oh don’t get me wrong, numerical names are useful when there are many varients of the same thing however what I do object to is meaningless acronyms. For example, cars are often given series name and a model number - E.G. XC60/XC70 - or a name and a meaningful version acronym (Golf GT). Another example would be the Nimbus Oracle series - each model is given a number which refers to its wheel size and a name.
My point is, numbers and ‘cool’ sounding acronyms are all well and good but they’re pointless if they don’t mean anything. E.G. Is a Hope X2 better than an M4? Is a Shimano XT better than an SLX?
I believe HS33 is the newer, stronger Magura brake version of the HS11
Yeah some #s make sense and others don’t. Eg the Giant Trance 1 and Haro SR 1.3 both top models in their line but opposite numbering. At least they stay consistent w/in the brand.
That’s a bad example - neither is better than the other (or which one is better depends on your application). X2 is a 2 piston X country brake, M4 is a 4 piston all Mountain brake.
Volvo’s XC acronym is also kind of meaningful - it means an “off-road” (at least in terms of styling) model, and there is also some logic to their numbering system in terms of different sizes of vehicle - an XC70 is presumably similarly sized to a V70.
Like John Foss I’m generally a fan of acronym and numbering systems as they can be a lot more useful than random names selected by the marketing department. Going back to brakes, Magura have moved to a logical numbering system for their latest disc brakes, which makes it easier to work out what’s what than when they were called Clara, Marta etc.
My point exactly, everyone knows that XC stands for cross-country (it’s even written on the bumper on some models) and that 60 is <90. On the other hand I have no idea what HS or SLX or XT or MT stands for so, without reading up about the product, I can’t tell which is the ‘better’ model and even if I do, the chances of remembering a string of letters is slim.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I hate it when companies give their products stupid names but it seems very fashionable for companies these days to give their different product lines very similar and hard to remember names. Magura are actually an OK example of product naming, Hope and Shimano on the other hand aren’t. Call me crazy but it would make more sense to give each product line a name that at least gives the buyer a slight heads up as to what their intended use is and a model number, or an obvious model name (‘Sport’ ‘Nurburgring’ etc.)
Once u are familiar w/ a company’s #ing system it’s easier to compare models and decide if the features of the more $ model are worth it to u. Right now I’m comparing tablets: Asus TF300, TF700, TF600 (windows 8); Galaxy 2, Note; & Surface RT.
Oh, and just to defend Shimano, their products do have a logical numbering system (which keeps going despite name changes at some lower levels). XT is M7xx, XTR M9xx, SLX M6xx and Deore M5xx. Ultegra 6xxx, DA 9xxx, 105 5xxx. They’ve kept that system going for at least 25 years.
I feel we’re missing the point a bit here. I, like everyone else here love numerical naming systems BUT I was just curious as to what the acronyms mean.
