Apple has a web service you can query for an Apple product marketing name.

Use the following base URL: http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product and add a query for the product marketing name you’re looking for.

OS X marketing name (10.7+)

Use the query string edid=<os version> to return the marketing name of an OS X Version.

Example using os version: 10.11.4

curl -s http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?edid=10.11.4

Response:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<root>
    <name>CPU Name</name>
    <configCode>OS X El Capitan</configCode>
    <locale>en_US</locale>
</root>

To get the marketing name of a running os, you can use sw_vers to fill the query value:

curl -s http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?edid=$( sw_vers -productVersion )

Hardware marketing name

Use the query string cc=<last x characters of serial number> to return the marketing name for a hardware product.

• If serial number is 12 characters, use the last 4 characters.
• If serial number is 11 characters, use the last 3 characters.
  

Example using a Mac serial number: C02PRAR2G8WP

curl -s http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?cc=G8WP

Response:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<root>
    <name>CPU Name</name>
    <configCode>MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)</configCode>
    <locale>en_US</locale>
</root>

Example using an Airport Express serial number: F12HQHPADV2R

curl -s http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?cc=DV2R

Response:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<root>
    <name>CPU Name</name>
    <configCode>AirPort Express 802.11n (2nd Generation)</configCode>
    <locale>en_US</locale>
</root>

To get the marketing name of a running computer, you can use ioreg to fill the query value:

curl -s http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?cc=$( ioreg -c IOPlatformExpertDevice -d 2 | awk -F\" '/IOPlatformSerialNumber/{ sn=$(NF-1); if (length(sn) == 12) count=3; else if (length(sn) == 11) count=2; print substr(sn, length(sn) - count, length(sn))}' )

I use awk to print the x last characters depending on the serial number length.

Here is a version of the awk program used in its own on the Airport Express serial number:

awk '{ if (length($0) == 12) count=3; else if (length($0) == 11) count=2; print substr($0, length($0) - count, length($0))}' <<< "F12HQHPADV2R"

Output:

DV2R

Cleaning output

If you only want the marketing name as output, you can use the following xpath query to print the configCode node content from the response:

'/root/configCode/text()'

OS X marketing name example:

curl -s http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?edid=$( sw_vers -productVersion ) | xpath '/root/configCode/text()' 2>/dev/null

Output:

OS X El Capitan

Hardware product marketing name example:

curl -s http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?cc=$( ioreg -c IOPlatformExpertDevice -d 2 | awk -F\" '/IOPlatformSerialNumber/{ sn=$(NF-1); if (length(sn) == 12) count=3; else if (length(sn) == 11) count=2; print substr(sn, length(sn) - count, length(sn))}' ) | xpath '/root/configCode/text()' 2>/dev/null

Output:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)

NOTE: xpath doesn’t add a newline at the end of the output.