Overnight, Apple’s changed the Leopard Developer Tools page to confirm officially that the tool formerly known as Xray is now called Instruments.

Well, while both names are certainly better than the prototype name (which, supposedly, was “PowerTrace”), I’m both relieved and worried by the change. When the name first came to my attention over a year ago, some Apple folks told me privately that I shouldn’t worry about any conflict with my own XRay utility (now being reincarnated as XRay II). Still, I hoped that the similarity might drive some clients my way, and I even linked from my own page to Apple’s, to avoid any confusion.

Now, this last-minute change is a also little worrying, since it’s probably a symptom of a cease-and-desist letter. This came up so suddenly that even the icon on the Apple site still uses an “x-ray machine” theme. I can’t find any larger Mac software company using any variation of “X-ray”, but who understands how lawyer’s minds work? It might even be a non-software company. Hopefully my new second-generation name will be non-conflicting enough to avoid any trouble.