Original Apple 'i-Brand' Creator Says Naming Convention 'on its Last Legs'

[Santabean2000]

I think that they do it because of the notorious heat issues inside Apple devices.

Fans are evil was Jobs' mantra. I understand it, but dammit, there are reasons for having fans! Like HEAT!!! The MacBook Pro used to scorch the creases out of people's pants! The Time Machines get really HOT!

Slower drives probably help with some of the heat issues. Not a solution...

Nope. They're just being cheapskates.

 

[neuropsychguy]

Is Apple Music noticeably hard to learn how to use?

No. I use Spotify because I only pay $40 a year for it but I never had any problems with Apple Music during the trial.

 

[Sill]

The i naming convention has run its course, and it was over used. It was originally done to indicate internet, as Apple wanted to communicate that their new All in One computer was the best device for the internet back when the internet was new. Since then everything was getting the i designation.

But don't you think the market fatigue that now results from iNames has more to do with all the "me-too" products that came out in the wake of Apple's iDevice success and less to do with the length of the naming convention? Pretty sure it started with iLuv and then spread throughout the industry. It spilled over into non-computer-related categories, which is when I realized that it was over.

Even so, I don't think renaming the existing devices would be a good idea. As others have stated, iPhone / iPod / iPad are brands now, not just product identifiers. No one has to ask for an Apple branded music player or phone to distinguish them from other brands; you just ask for an iPhone and done.

Maybe the iMac could survive going to just "Mac" or "Macintosh" again, but I'm not convinced. Seeing the new things come out as "Apple this/that" leaves me with a feeling reminiscent of everything MS back in the 90s. Reading articles reviewing MS products was pretty painful, when writers would constantly use the whole name throughout the text. "Microsoft Word", "Microsoft Windows", "Microsoft Bob", over and over again.

Using the company name as part of the product brand can be useful ("Chevy Corvette"), but it gets oppressive after a while.

 

[neuropsychguy]

The i naming convention has run its course, and it was over used. It was originally done to indicate internet, as Apple wanted to communicate that their new All in One computer was the best device for the internet back when the internet was new. Since then everything was getting the i designation.

It also meant interim. When Steve Jobs came back in 1997 he was the iCEO.

 

[Sill]

I have to agree. The constant outages, the complexity, the bugginess. The tone deaf responses to complaints...

Are you speaking of tech support, or feedback to Apple about product concerns? In my experience, their tech support is nothing short of top shelf. I've also gotten responses from hidden Apple departments in relation to a complaint about a phone vendor, and Apple was instrumental in clearing up the issue.

As far as feedback, I know they're bad with that. Its odd how an entire company could ignore feedback when their previous CEO who was allegedly this huge jerk would often respond directly to people who contacted him with concerns, and his responses were usually not just thoughtful but also showed gratitude for the feedback.

 

[Santabean2000]

Apple definitely needs to get their simplicity back.

Focus on the essential and execute efficiently. Get some urgency back.
[doublepost=1465310021][/doublepost]"Though Apple’s customers remain fiercely loyal, the natives are getting restless."

Sums it up perfectly.

 

[theluggage]

Apple's product naming used to be extremely simple - computers were Macs and consumer products were i-devices.

Oh dear. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be:

iMac launched 1998.
iBook launched 1999
iTunes launched first for Macintosh.
iPod launched 2001.

Now, there's an argument that, as of 2016, it would make sense if all OS X devices were called "MacSomething" and all iOS devices "iSomething" but there's really no historical precedent for that. Whatever shortcomings Apple has today (and making shedloads of money doesn't seem to be amongst those) I don't think re-naming products is going to fix it - and you'd be stark staring bonkers to drop "iPhone" and "Mac" as names.

Have you tried to boot up a Mac with a 5400RPM drive recently? Or launched an app? It's painful.

Have you tried to boot up any computer from spinning rust recently? The difference between 54000RPM and 7200RPM is minor in comparison. Frankly, If you can't afford a new Mac with a fancy PCIe SSD then sticking a cheap 2.5"-format SSD in your old computer might be a better option.

The issue with MacBooks is the price of 512GB and 1TB SSD options and the lack of after-market SSD upgrades because, with a laptop, external drives clobber portability. The issue with desktops, however, is user habit: for a small-form-factor desktop, more than 256GB of internal storage (for the OS, apps and a few frequently used files) is an indulgence. Using external storage (via WiFi, Ethernet, USB3 or Thunderbolt depending on your performance needs) for everything else makes more sense.

 

[CFreymarc]

This moaning over 5400 RPM HDD's confuses me. You're aware of the speed of an HDD but are you also aware of its cache and how multi-platter drives access data more efficiently? I have a 4 cylinder 7 passenger SUV that does zero to 60 in 5.4 seconds, there's just a lot more to it.

Keep thinking the 5400 RPM is over someone loosing out on a big comission.

 

[Mactendo]

iDevice naming scheme is way better than Apple device naming. It's shorter, more elegant and everyone still immediately gets who's the creator of that cool and smart iThing. iPhone, iMac, iWatch, iTunes, iMusic, iPad, iCar, iPay... compare it to boring Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Watch.

 

[oneMadRssn]

An electric car.

Apple's hiring spree over the past 5 years dwarfs the entire staff of Tesla, many times over. If all of them are working on an electric car, it's certainly inefficient use of labor. If only some of them are working on an electric car, what are the rest doing? It's inefficient either way.

Compare Apple to a company like GE. GE employs a bit over 300 thousand people. They make a lot of things. From light bulbs to microwaves to wind turbines to engines to medical devices and much much more. Apple employs over 100 thousand people, and has a small handful of product that pretty much all fall under under the "consumer electronics" category. You would think Apple would be making 1/3 as much as GE with all that human resource.

I'm not saying GE is great. But if you compare it to other large corporations, Apple looks woefully inefficient and has totally failed at scaling up so far.

 

[Jsameds]

Tim is definitely not Jobs when it comes to product design. He's a bean counter with out vision. 5400 HDD lol Watch Bands? Outdated computers..........

Macs have seldom been cutting edge spec wise for the last 30 years. Not sure where the idea of Tim implementing it comes from TBH.

 

[Zirel]

Apple's hiring spree over the past 5 years dwarfs the entire staff of Tesla, many times over. If all of them are working on an electric car, it's certainly inefficient use of labor. If only some of them are working on an electric car, what are the rest doing? It's inefficient either way.

Compare Apple to a company like GE. GE employs a bit over 300 thousand people. They make a lot of things. From light bulbs to microwaves to wind turbines to engines to medical devices and much much more. Apple employs over 100 thousand people, and has a small handful of product that pretty much all fall under under the "consumer electronics" category. You would think Apple would be making 1/3 as much as GE with all that human resource.

I'm not saying GE is great. But if you compare it to other large corporations, Apple looks woefully inefficient and has totally failed at scaling up so far.

Many thousands of those 100K employees, are store employees...

No, Apple is far efficient, their employees generate much more revenue than GE and whatever.

 

[anomie]

I'm using Google Music so I honestly don't know. Is Apple Music noticeably hard to learn how to use?

Yes, no and also: maybe.

What a question...
[doublepost=1465314377][/doublepost]

Macs have seldom been cutting edge spec wise for the last 30 years. Not sure where the idea of Tim implementing it comes from TBH.

Newly introduced macs usually use latest Intel technology. They just don't lower prices over the year.
Something other companies dream of being able to.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Many thousands of those 100K employees, are store employees...

No, Apple is far efficient, their employees generate much more revenue than GE and whatever.

Revenue generated per employee is a bogus measure. By that metric, Facebook is far more efficient than both Apple and GE. Indeed, some smaller private equity firm that employs less than a dozen people but rakes in hundreds of millions would probably be at the top of that metric. That is not a good way to measure efficiency.

 

[gnipgnop]

Apple Music is "bewildering"? There are five categories at the bottom of the UI to click on + a pull up overlay that has larger album artwork and the song currently playing. If that's "bewildering", then I'm not sure what to call a desktop computer UI.

 

[Rafagon]

I dispute that Apple is being run efficiently. Compared to 5-7 years ago, Apple has grown in size dramatically, hired a lot more engineers and other staff in pretty much every department. Yet Apple's output in terms of quality products seems to be about the same or less, and Apple's output in terms of services is larger, but not necessarily better. What are all these engineers doing? You know that expression that COE types always say, do more with less? Well, it seems Apple is doing meh with more. The output per engineer is much lower than it was.

I couldn't agree with you more.

Case in point: iOS 9.3.2 for iPad Pro 9.7".

iOS 9.3.2 was released on a Monday. Let's call that Day 0. It took until Day 4 to pull it for the iPad Pro 9.3.2. Then it took until Day 17 for Apple to finally issue a fixed version of iOS 9.3.2 for the iPad Pro 9.7".

Apple allegedly replaced some of the bricked iPad Pros: Money that didn't need to be wasted.

Programmers spent days fixing iOS 9.3.2 when they could have been working on iOS 9.3.3 or iOS 10: Time and money that didn't need to be wasted.

Not to mention the dissatisfaction of customers whose devices were bricked and the impact on their loyalty towards the brand!

 

[Zirel]

Revenue generated per employee is a bogus measure. By that metric, Facebook is far more efficient than both Apple and GE. Indeed, some smaller private equity firm that employs less than a dozen people but rakes in hundreds of millions would probably be at the top of that metric. That is not a good way to measure efficiency.

That's the method you used. Duh!

 

[bushido]

please no "Apple Logo" Phone

 

[samcraig]

I never really thought of "S" years as being off years. But maybe that's just me

 

[SeattleMoose]

I have been using Macs and Apple products since 1989. Macs used to be super-intuitive with easy to understand menus and options. Unfortunately I have seen a move away from simple user-friendly GUIs to elegant but confusing GUIs where functionality is hidden or available only if you "know the trick". While it may make for sleek looking GUIs, hiding functionality is getting more and more confusing to a lot of us older Mac users.

Here is an idea...why not hire some midwest folks over 60 to test your GUIs. They would come fairly cheap and would point out where the GUIs could be made more intuitive. Using 20 and 30 year old tech gurus to evaluate user friendliness is not advisable as to them everything is intuitive. Like the IT person who snickers when you say "I don't know how to....".

It is like when they removed the click wheel on the iPod...left me scratching my head. Tactile and intuitive replaced by unintuitive touch screen that requires your eyeball to do anything. I could navigate my click-wheel iPod in the dark.

And iTunes....what a mess!!! What started out as a simple music program to go with the iPod has evolved into a hall of mirrors. As iTunes evolved to try and keep pace with the iDevice revolution, rather than redesigning the whole thing from the ground up, Apple just keeps tacking on functionality. Result is that iTunes is the "urban sprawl" of software.

Apple is losing its identity. While the iDevice revolution has been great for profits, I worry about the long term viability of a company that just keeps doing tweaks and adding emojis in lieu of stepping back and saying, how can we get back to making the end user experience simpler and more intuitive. I love Apple but they can do better...or at some point a fresh young company will eclipse them.

 

[jakebro]

I agree with Segall. Except I would say their computers are Macs, their consumer products are i-things, and their services are Apple-things, excluding the i-branded iCloud service and the Apple-branded Apple TV and Apple Watch products.

 

[kwikdeth]

I dispute that Apple is being run efficiently. Compared to 5-7 years ago, Apple has grown in size dramatically, hired a lot more engineers and other staff in pretty much every department. Yet Apple's output in terms of quality products seems to be about the same or less, and Apple's output in terms of services is larger, but not necessarily better. What are all these engineers doing? You know that expression that COE types always say, do more with less? Well, it seems Apple is doing meh with more. The output per engineer is much lower than it was.

Well we still haven't seen what Apple has been "Cook"ing up in their labs with all this increased spending on R&D. I'll be the first one to pipe up that I feel the company is not headed in the right direction (that direction being some actual new or dramatically revamped product instead of iteration after iteration - eg MacBooks have had the same basic design for 8 years now, just thinner)... at the same time that can't all be going into a black hole. Cook needs to start delivering I think, and soon, or this clamorous rancor will only grow.

Cook has been excellent in moving the company forward in social causes but other than that he has always felt like a "Denethor" to me. Not the king, just somebody holding down the fort until the next real visionary comes along.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Keep the i for some products.

Pretty sure iPhone and iPad will last sometime. To much a household name.
Apple Phone, Apple Pad... hmm....

But, for the most past part Apple has abandoned the "i" naming for quite a while.
Apple TV, Apple Watch.
"iMessage" into "Messages".
No more 'iLife", no more "iWork".
Even "iPhoto" has become "Photos".

I wonder about iMac though.
Mac Pro and iMac converging into "Mac"? (nah..)

 

[IJ Reilly]

Its going away, but it would be foolish for Apple to abandon the name iPhone, given its brand recognition.

Additionally, I like how Segall pointed out that the S version of the iPhone was under Steve's watch. I think they should have simplified that scheme years ago

The focus on iPhone naming conventions is a bit curious, since the naming of this line of products is the most straightforward of all Apple's product lines (an observation I typed on my Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015 iMac).

 

[oneMadRssn]

That's the method you used. Duh!

No I didn't. I never said anything about revenue.