Apple's Internal iOS Codenames Revealed, Sporting Winter Theme

When it comes to flavorful codenames for operating systems, the majority would tend to think about Android's bountiful dessert flavors, or Mac OS X's large cats. However, Apple's not about to let iOS off the hook of woefully mundane names. According to homebrew developer Steve Troughton-Smith, Apple's internal codenames for its mobile operating system is inspired by winter sports. For instance, the current 5.0 OS firmware is apparently named Telluride after a popular ski town in Colorado, with previous versions having names like Alpine, Big Bear (props to repping California!), and Sugarbowl.

Check out the entire list of codenames and their corresponding OS versions below for reference. See how many names you recognize (or rather, how many you don't, cause I can barely recognize half of them, being from sunny California myself). Perhaps you should have gone for surf towns or beaches, Apple, well, you being from California yourself (Cupertino, to be specific).

1.0: Alpine (1.0.0 – 1.0.2: Heavenly)

1.1: Little Bear (1.1.1: Snowbird, 1.1.2: Oktoberfest)

2.0: Big Bear

2.1: Sugarbowl

2.2: Timberline

3.0: Kirkwood

3.1: Northstar

3.2: Wildcat (iPad only)

4.0: Apex

4.1: Baker

4.2: Jasper (4.2.5 – 4.2.10: Phoenix)

4.3: Durango

5.0: Telluride

5.1: Hoodoo

Personally speaking, I think it's a bit more obscure to the average person, and nowhere near as sweet as Google's Gingerbread or Ice Cream Sandwiches, nor as aggressive as Apple's Lions and Tigers (perhaps Bears, one day?). Perhaps the guys in Cupertino could spice things up a little. What do our readers think? Feel free to your imaginative naming schemes in the comments section below. Have fun coming up with some crazy names!

[via The iPhone Blog]