“Most people expected Apple to show off an ‘iWatch’ and an ‘iPay’ or ‘iWallet’ mobile payments system to go along with it,” Shara Tibken writes for CNET. “But Cook didn’t stick to the ‘i’ moniker at all, shirking the branding that has been pervasive at the company since the iMac computer landed in 1998.”
“Why the name change?” Tibken wonders. “Apple’s not saying, but some analysts believe the Apple Watch and Apple Pay represent the Cupertino, Calif., company’s efforts to start a new era — one separate from Steve Jobs. Jobs, who died from pancreatic cancer in October 2011, had his hand in every product Apple introduced after he returned to run the company in 1997. Each iPhone and iPad released since his death built on the first devices he created, rather than something entirely new. But the Apple Watch is different.”
“The jury is still out on the Apple Watch, but at the very least, the wearable — and Apple Pay — helped Cook keep his vow that the company would enter new product categories and deliver ‘some really great stuff,'” Tibken writes. “The ‘i’ in Apple’s products came from the early ages of the World Wide Web. Many people today believe it stands for ‘me,’ but it started out as ‘i’ for “Internet.” The majority of Apple’s popular devices and services today use the moniker, including iPad, iTunes, and iCloud. Along with helping Cook make his own mark on Apple, the new naming structure could help Apple push its overarching brand, analysts say. Another theory? The ‘i’ was getting stale… The new naming convention unveiled Tuesday has become a punchline among the technorati. Even Cook accidentally referred to the device by its rumored ‘iWatch’ name in his interview with ABC News on Tuesday. Whatever the reason for the new name, Cook made clear that the company Jobs left behind hasn’t stopped innovating.”
Read more in the full article here.
Oh no they’re changing their marketing Apple is doooooomed!!
Must be nice to get paid to write about nothing.
Anyone can put an “I” in front of a word (except pod, phone or pad) and sell a product: iTruck, iToilet, iPorn, iEtc. People will think it has Apple’s stamp of approval. But the Apple logo before the word makes it distinctly an Apple product. Think different.
It is distinctly more difficult for another company to Anything, or Apple(anything). This gives much more control over the naming of their products. i(Anything) is dead, and Apple killed it. I am so happy about that. Apple TV was a good experience for them, as a name. I liked it when they used iPod, iMac, iPhone, but it’s just been a bag of hurt, and made Apple seem like a bully.
Now they are unfettered to name their products without worry.
Anyone else wanting to use Anything, from now on will just look like a douche, and Apple can probably justify stomping all over them.
Agreed. Apple has had a lot of problems in recent years with Copywrite on names. So many companies followed Apple’s lead on the “i” that they’ve found almost every product category name imaginable already existing somewhere around the world with the “i” name. The nicely nullifies that problem. No one else on earth can use that. Much easier to defend in court.
copyright / trademark you know what I mean.
I’ve come up with a new way to enjoy doing mathematics with circles. Now I just use π as my multiplier. High tech, yummy and accurate to infinite decimal points.
I think it’s possible the ‘i for Internet’ is not on the watch and the pay system because they will not require the internet and will be standalone devices. (The pay system could use some sort of pre-pay voucher.)
Prepay/preload on a iTunes card? That could be handy in certain situations.
Agreed.
No, the I can’t stand for “Internet” because no iPod except the iPod Touch has ever been able to connect to the Internet.
So… where did you get your music from, then? Sure… some people ripped their CD collection… but a large number of people used napster, kazaa and limewire.
Yes, the “i” did stand for internet. Go back and watch Steve Jobs introducing the original iMac.
I’ll change my mind if the iPhone gets renamed Apple Phone.
Just look at all the copy cats. How many times has Apple tried to trademark an ‘iName’ in other countries and have to pay large amounts to secure the name or maybe even find themselves unable to secure the name at all?
Just stick with the logo and problem solved. You will see a lot more of this from now on I’m sure. Hey, it worked for Prince.
Some company will sue regardless claiming they had the name first.
Actually… it didn’t really work for prince. He went back to “Prince”
For apple, it will work, though… because =Apple… and not “unpronounceable symbol”
iDon’tcare.
Weren’t you the guy who railed on nonstop when you couldn’t listen to Pandora on your iPhone while surfing the Web? What’s your obsession these days?
Girls with nice asses.
You need Girls with nice Dicks!
To get to the other side…
Apple TV has been out there for quite some time. No ‘i’ in the name there either.
Good point. Curiously (?) the mark on the top is tv (the difference being lowercase when the world uses uppercase for a TV).
Ultimately it’s just marketing. Reading deep meaning into any of it is mental silliness, I think.
Jobs said he didn’t like the “I” moniker. It’s not like this is new — AppleTV anyone?
Because in these two cases it changes the word from a noun to a verb.
Then again, it could be because someone else already owns the iWatch trademark in the US:
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/who-owns-the-iwatch-trademark.html/?a=viewall
When you have two different naming conventions you introduce confusion in differentiation. I have no problem with the new direction if consistent logic was applied.
So if this is Tim’s mark, please remove “i” from every product.
If not, the watch is a hardware product so it should retain the “i” moniker. Apple Pay is a service that does not require the same moniker. One approach for hardware and one for services.
Now, that would be a consistent approach. 🙂
At the time iMac was introduced, there was also and PowerMac, PowerBook. Over the years, we also got Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, MacBook and MacBook Air. We also got AppleTV.
And on the “i” side of the names, we got few more mostly mobile devices (iPod, iPad, iPhone). So, the tally today is:
AppleTV
Mac Mini
Mac Pro
MacBook Pro
MacBook Air
Apple Watch
Mighty mouse
Magic mouse
Airport Extreme
Airport Express
Airport Time Capsule
Earpods…
iMac
iPod
iPad
iPhone
iWork
iLife
From what I can see, the only naming confusion was introduced when iMac was announced (having the first “i” name). Majority of Apple hardware products of today don’t have the “i” naming, though.
It is unlikely that either iPhone or iPad would ever be renamed to Apple phone or Apple pad (or PHONE / PAD). So, the naming will remain as it always was — inconsistent and perhaps confusing.
Thank you for validating my main point — inconsistent.
Actually, my point was that inconsistent doesn’t necessarily mean a problem for Apple. Confusing would be, but I’m not sure how much confusion is there with this type of naming.
When we take a closer look, another pattern (sort of) emerges:
Apple- products (TV, Pay, Care)
“i” products (Pod, Pad, Phone, Work, Life)
Mac- products (Mini, Pro, book Air, book Pro)
And the peripherals (Airport stuff, mice, keyboards, etc).
I think it may be a bit too much to expect some perfect consistency across devices / product lines / services. It is really unlikely anyone was profoundly confused by these names…
Inconsistent LEADS to confusion and for some people could be a problem for Apple. Wake up splitting hairs Apple apologist.
Go away, ocd aspie..
Well, so far, it doesn’t seem to have been much of a problem. Nobody can seriously argue that anyone out there who ever saw an iPhone and a Macintosh computer wasn’t aware that they were made by the same company, Apple.
The “i”-naming had worked initially as it quickly enhanced the branding, but with all the persistent misspelling, there may be better options, and with Apple Watch, perhaps Apple is becoming aware of this. However, with iPhone, they’re now stuck, for better or worse.
From the very beginning, there was an obvious and prevalent problem with the whole concept of iNaming convention. Outside of the rather small circle of long-time Apple fans who know exactly how to properly write these i-Names, majority or ordinary population consistently misspelled these names. Most common misspelling was I-mac (or I-phone). There were several variations of these, but the essence of the problem is, too many people never learned (in over 16 years since the first iMac came out) how to correctly spell these. Even reporters in news media too often got it wrong. It took Apple over 16 years to realise that the whole i-Naming thing simply wasn’t working all that well.
Another problem was the awkwardness of beginning a sentence with a non-capitalised word (ex: iPhone is the highest selling model in US). This is simply in violation of virtually ALL western language grammar and style rules, which require capitalisation of the first letter of the first word in a sentence.
Apple has built an immensely huge and immediately recognisable in the i-Name devices, from iMac, thorugh iPod, iPad and iPhone. This is the testimony to the power of the Apple brand itself, and the quality of their products. However, the fact that we still have majority of ordinary populace consistently misspelling i-Name devices (after 16 years) clearly indicates that the naming choice (or at least the choice of spelling) wasn’t perfect and it is time to begin moving away from it.
Cloud
Tim referred to it as iWatch on ABC? Tim’s gonna get Steved!
And also it will sells Macs.
After all there is no Windoze font with the “” moniker in them…
I call this a clever, clever change!