6 ms·
And a while before that, everything was "Active"...
by jeffbarr 12y ago
And a while before that, everything was "Active"...
- epochwolf 12y agoAs a counter point, Apple has a habit of labeling products with i- and labeling software libraries with -Kit.
- flyinghamster 12y agoIndeed, when I first heard of "Healthkit" I misread it as "Heathkit" even though Apple is pretty much the antithesis of Heathkit.
- UVB-76 12y agoApple have been fairly consistent; the 'i' prefix has been synonymous with Apple since the iPod in 2001. Microsoft chop and change brands all the time, often in ways that are confusing to the consumer and damaging to the business.
- zeckalpha 12y agoiMac, 1998.
- UVB-76 12y agoNoted, but the iPod (and iTunes, also 2001) is what made Apple (and the 'i' prefix) a household name, and paved the way for everything that followed.
- theoutlander 12y agoThe number of times products get rebranded is a sign of the fact that there's just not any forethought!
- bunderbunder 12y agoApple doesn't just willy-nilly throw the i- designation of every product they have, though. i- is a special sub-brand that's used to express something that is small, easy, light, etc. Customers who are familiar with Apple's branding can immediately guess at how an iMac differs from a PowerMac (or, when they still existed, an iBook from a PowerBook) based only on knowing their names. That branding was carried forward, so that the same connotations helped offer consumers an immediate sense of familiarity with the basic idea behind new products such as the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Even now, you see a hint of the distinction alive in iOS vs OS X. They rest on the same technology base, but keeping the distinction alive means users still have an easy mnemonic to help them keep track of the distinction between the two and their relative capabilities. So yes, Apple does reuse monikers in their branding. But they use them to create a branding language that helps them to better communicate with customers. This is starkly different from what Microsoft is trying to do with the Windows brand, which is to turn the word into a blaring, monotonous drone to be blasted at us until we enter some sort of alternate mental dimension where words lose all meaning and every single noun is replaced with the word Windows.
- tedunangst 12y agoCuriously, the Watch is not an i product despite being among the smallest and lightest products.
- buckbova 12y agoSwatch owns it . . . . kinda. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-04/swatch-objects-to-authorities-on-apple-s-use-of-iwatch-label-1-.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-04/swatch-objects-to-a...
- hyp0 12y agoThere are other reasons for not using i, e.g. iTouch, iWatch
- whyenot 12y agoLabeling things with -Kit dates back to early NeXTSTEP (1989). I believe it was originally intended as an indicator that a library included an object-oriented API.
- UVB-76 12y agoLet's not forget the 'Live' phase. Windows Live, Live Calendar, Live Contacts, Live Messenger, Live Photos, Live Mail...
- AlexanderDhoore 12y agoOr "Visual", even though none of the products are actually any more visual than their competition.
- pavlov 12y agoTo be fair, the original Visual Basic was indeed much more visual than the competition. They messed it up with Visual C++ which wasn't visual at all (unless raw Win32/MFC code is someone's idea of beautiful scenery).
- Turing_Machine 12y agoAlso "Visual J++", or, as I called it, "Visual J Double-Plus Ungood".
- roel_v 12y agoActually, to this day there are no (or at least few, we could debate about Qt Designer) C++ tools that will let you draw a UI, then double-click the button to enter the code of what should happen when you click that button. Is it pretty, or easy to learn how it works under the hood? No. Does it work, and work well? Yes.
- tormeh 12y agoVisual Studio has a very good and well integrated visual GUI builder.
- pyre 12y agoIs it anymore "Visual" than, say, XCode, or any other GUI builder?