May 16, 2010
As most people know I’m rather fond of Apple products. I suppose you cold call me a bit of a fanboy 
Since there has not been much in the way of interesting news which I feel the need to write about, this weekend I thought that I might share my thoughts on Apple’s product naming philosophy. Now it’s obvious that I don’t have any insider knowledge, but there seems to be a trend in their naming convention. Now there are a few distinct product families within Apples product range.
There’s the notebooks – MacBook, MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. There are the desktop machines – Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. There’s the all-in-one desktop machine – iMac. Then there’s Apples multimedia devices – iPad, iPhone and iPod.
Once you break their product families up in this way, it seems obvious about their naming conventions. The notebooks are all called MacBook – something, and their desktop machines call Mac something. This seems a bit of a throwback to the old Macintosh. So if the device is computer based then it will have the word Mac in the name. If it is a notebook then it will have the word Book in the name. So – the notebooks are MacBooks, and the desktops are Mac’s. Then there’s the odd one out – the iMac. To me it seems (when it comes to hardware anyway) that the “i” stands for “integrated” – meaning a device which has processing ability and display ability all in one. Therefore the desktop all-in-one is the iMac – i.e the integrated processing and displaying desktop computer.
The mobile multimedia devices must, by this definition, carry the “i” prefix. The iPod, is the first of the family – so it is an integrated processing and displaying box for music (initially). Now a box does not sound very sexy – so a better term would be a “Pod” – hence the iPod. The iPhone is obvious. Now then there’s the iPad. By the “i” definition it carries both processing and displaying functionality, and it does all the things that the iPod does, and more. It is not quite a notebook and more than an iPod (or the iPhone). Let us think of an analogy – if your not using a notebook to write some ideas down, and your wanting more than a scrap of paper, you might want a small pad. Hence the Pad in iPad.
Well – maybe…
If there is anyone out there from Apple – what do you think? am I on the right lines?