NSCoriolisBlog

Get your Apple device model name in a readable format

August 1, 2011 – 13:36 Share on Twitter

With OSX Lion, when you select “About this Mac” => “More Info” (or open the System Profiler), it displays your computer model name in a readable format.

After a little snooping with HTTPScoop, I found that the name comes from an Apple server.

System profiler will send the last 3 characters of your machine serial number and the server will send back the machine name, in xml format.

My iMac serial ends with “5RU” so calling the url below and passing “5RU” as a parameter:

curl -o - "http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?cc=5RU&lang=en_US"

gives:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<root>
<name>CPU Name</name>
<configCode>iMac (27-inch, Late 2009)</configCode>
<locale>en_US</locale>
</root>

Changing the locale works:

curl -o - "http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?cc=5RU&lang=fr_CH"

gives:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<root>
<name>CPU Name</name>
<configCode>iMac (27 pouces, fin 2009)</configCode>
<locale>fr_FR</locale>
</root>

It works also with the iPhone:

curl -o - "http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?cc=A4S&lang=en_US"

gives:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<root>
<name>CPU Name</name>
<configCode>iPhone 4</configCode>
<locale>en_US</locale>
</root>

Enjoy.