Kind of like cars? This is a trivial thing, but something I've been thinking about. Even as an Apple fanboy, I'm getting to the point where I really have to think of what iPhones came out in which year. It would make things a lot easier to keep track of if people started referring to the iPhone 4S as the 2011 iPhone or the iPhone 4 as the 2010 iPhone, kind of like cars. Think this might ever happen?
I think most car enthusiasts refer to cars by model #s as well, not the year. Also since cars are refreshed every few years it wouldn't work well with an iPhone as we will see yearly cycles.
Macbooks also don't really have a new (official) name. For example, the MacBook Pro has been just the MacBook pro for YEARS. We haven't had an iPhone officially named JUST iPhone since the first.