Under OS X in modern times? Absolutely. They've made it standard practice for nearly every piece of first party software they make that doesn't have significant legacy or isn't specifically aimed at developers.
>At least Apple had the decency to put the letter "i" in front of everything
If only. That went away a long time ago however for non-legacy. "iMail", "iPages", "iNumbers", "iPhotos", "iMessages" etc would obviously not be the most creative or exciting names, but they would fulfill the fundamental core purpose of a trademark brand name in terms of being trivially, reasonably (wouldn't be surprised if there are some collisions mixed in there) uniquely identifiable. Apple has not done that, and in fact in many cases actively moved away from that (iMessage was a thing, now it's just "Messages"). They do this constantly and they've encouraged it in the MAS.
Apple themselves can somewhat get away with it by virtue of size. Doing a search for "Apple Mail" is reasonably on target for Mail.app, though conversely if you want to search for something related to Apple and mail that isn't Mail.app (notice how just here in discussing it I have to use a made up, but very common user invented name just to distinguish what I'm talking about) you will have more difficulty. Even for major examples like that though it's still worse then where Apple actually still has something more specific, like GarageBand or FaceTime. And when it's some random small 3rd party? Argh.
Specificity in names is good and easy, this isn't some huge burden. It's irritating it's even an issue that has to be talked about at all. Qbserve is an excellent example: it's a small, focused niche app that's very new, but the name is simple and memorable,and a search for "Qbserve" is all about the product.
Under OS X in modern times? Absolutely. They've made it standard practice for nearly every piece of first party software they make that doesn't have significant legacy or isn't specifically aimed at developers.
>At least Apple had the decency to put the letter "i" in front of everything
If only. That went away a long time ago however for non-legacy. "iMail", "iPages", "iNumbers", "iPhotos", "iMessages" etc would obviously not be the most creative or exciting names, but they would fulfill the fundamental core purpose of a trademark brand name in terms of being trivially, reasonably (wouldn't be surprised if there are some collisions mixed in there) uniquely identifiable. Apple has not done that, and in fact in many cases actively moved away from that (iMessage was a thing, now it's just "Messages"). They do this constantly and they've encouraged it in the MAS.
Apple themselves can somewhat get away with it by virtue of size. Doing a search for "Apple Mail" is reasonably on target for Mail.app, though conversely if you want to search for something related to Apple and mail that isn't Mail.app (notice how just here in discussing it I have to use a made up, but very common user invented name just to distinguish what I'm talking about) you will have more difficulty. Even for major examples like that though it's still worse then where Apple actually still has something more specific, like GarageBand or FaceTime. And when it's some random small 3rd party? Argh.
Specificity in names is good and easy, this isn't some huge burden. It's irritating it's even an issue that has to be talked about at all. Qbserve is an excellent example: it's a small, focused niche app that's very new, but the name is simple and memorable,and a search for "Qbserve" is all about the product.