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2022 'MacBook' and 'iMac Pro' Could Help Apple Simplify Its Naming Strategy
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As professionals have quite diverse performance requirement, having a specific "pro" line is old fashioned. The number of comments about "what is a professional" at MR illustrate the problem quite well. Personally I think the "pro" word is toe crumbing.
Macbook - Macbook Max
iMac - iMac Max
Mac - Mac Max (nah that does not work)
other ideas?
Macbook - Macbook Max
iMac - iMac Max
Mac - Mac Max (nah that does not work)
other ideas?
Especially since he famously hated nostalgia. He was always moving forward, not looking back.
I haven’t looked for a couple of years but MacRumors used to archive forums and it was interesting to see what people thought about Steve Jobs back in the mid 2000’s when he was dropping Flash support or not adopting common power cords or when he decided that desktops didn’t need built in CD/DVD drives and sure as hell didn’t need BluRay drives. Somehow the people at the time didn’t realize just what a genius Steve was and actually called him names quite similar to what I see people calling Tim Cook now.
Those archives may still be in the MacRumor forums. Look and read for yourself if they are.
What's most impressive is how you entirely omitted the middle sentence.
Do you walk into the Apple Store, Best Buy, Target, etc, and see huge sale signs for "2021 iPad"? I think not.
Is it called the MacBook Pro or 2021 MacBook Pro?
Don't be obtuse just to argue.
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Edit: Misread the post.
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The need for expandability is a very narrow view of what a Pro is. Most of us need more speed, power and a larger screen than what a standard iMac has. And the highest end of the iMac line is not the same as the base level desktop all-in-one that's going to be used as a point-of-sale cash register or a web surfing machine for elementary schools.
Despite the outcry from a few years ago, I would say that an expandable tower is something they may want to cut out of their line entirely. Apple's strengths around design, consumer friendliness, novel use of tech, etc. do not exactly jibe with the cost-to-performance metric that gamers and 3D renderers need most.
The Apple product matrix is more complex because needs have changed. A 2x2 (consumer/pro+mobile/desktop) grid is no longer going to cut it.
Perhaps it's better to think of Apple's products now as entry, power-hungry, and executive (though those would obviously not be consumer names). For instance, a highly paid executive may not need all the power that Apple's highest-end laptop provides, but they want the nicest machine Apple can make. These are different forces that require different compromises.
Except that’s not true at all. The i stands for “internet” but it is now just a household name and doesn’t really mean anything. Nobody thinks the iphone stands for “internet phone” we just know it as the name of a product. Same with SE phones, which stands for “Special Edition” but we just see it as an entry level product.
When introducing the iMac computer, Steve Jobs literally said that the computer was targeted at the “number one use that the consumers say they want to use the computer for”: the internet. It was launched just as the internet was catching on and was made central in the computer’s advertising.
So why did Steve Jobs change iBook to MacBook when MacBooks were still the consumer laptops.
Maybe Cook told him to. Dun Dun duuuunnnnn!!!!!
As I remember, the change was from PowerBook to MacBook, to mark the change away from the PowerPC chip.
Yes they didn’t want power in the name because that was a clear reference to the PowerPC chip. But that doesn’t have anything to do with iBook.
The model year becoming part of the product name was literally the entire point of the post I replied to.
You hopped into the middle of a conversation with zero context.
It wasn’t, though. Apple liked the Power prefix in the 1990s; the PowerBook was called that years before it moved to PowerPC.
Yes because they named the PowerPC chip off of the PowerBook naming scheme. That was the point of the name.
I was thinking the same. However, I'm sure Tim does sign off on the names, so he does bear some responsibility. Apple needs to return to the design ethos of simplicity. Simple doesn't mean you take away features, you just make it so that those features are easy to use. I get so sick of iOS updates and options/items/preferences move from where they've been for years, and usually they get buried. This isn't simplicity but making things more complicated for the sake of making things more complicated.
I think that difference between "pro" and "nicer" is entirely artificial, people trying to find something to complain about.
What's an example, on the APPLE side, of a feature that is "pro" without being "nicer"?
The only serious example I can think of is having two ProRes Decoders on the M1 Max.
Everything else, from iPods Pro, to more USB connectors, to a better camera, to an SD card slot, are of "generic" niceness, not especially limited to a very specialized class of users.
That may have helped inspire the name, but the related POWER architecture already existed.
I think you’re looking at it backwards. The question is: is a Pro feature called that because it’s chiefly of interest for professionals?
A MacBook Pro arguably targets pros. So does the Mac Pro, certainly. Also, software like Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro. In contrast, an iPhone Pro may be used by pro photographers, but many of its buyers simply want a higher-end phone. And the AirPods Pro aren’t about “pro”s at all.
And the United States of America refers to the fact that, 250 years ago, the individual states were in fact so separate that their being united as a single entity (for the purposes of interaction with other nations) was a big deal.
Things change, words and phrases change with them, and most people are not so stupid as to not understand this. No intelligent person is running around complaining that "we shouldn't refer to an x86 server as having a PC architecture because it's not personal". No-one's saying that Windows Azure is not a UI product so has no Windows in it.
It may surprise you to know this, but Apple does not actually grow apples!
So I am saying "for Apple merketing Pro means nicer" and your argument is "no, words mean what I insist they mean, against all evidence to the contrary"?
What does "targets Pros" mean? The Pro models target people who are willing to pay for them. MOSTLY they are willing to pay because they are nicer. iPods Pro is an obvious case (as you admit) but the same is true of iPhone Pro, or MacBook Pro. I have an iMac Pro -- bought because it was nicer along the dimensions I cared about, not because of any Pro needs.
It's conceivable that the Mac Pro fits into the case of "only being interesting to professionals" but even that, I suspect, is to force the point beyond common sense. The device is not being bought by "professionals" per se, it's being bought by people who want lots of computation. Which is not the same thing. It's unlikely to be interesting to doctors, lawyers, or *********s. It is likely to be interesting to people who make money from their tools (photographers or videographers) yes, but also for people with rather different business models, like those working on AI in universities.
The whole POINT of this discussion is that insisting on the literal meaning of words (whatever that is) in a marketing context is idiotic.
iBooks became MacBooks and PowerBooks became MacBook Pros. Then MacBooks were dropped once there was barely any difference between the 13” MB and MBP.