From the first iMac in the 1990s to today, the prefix "i" has symbolized Apple - but Apple has been working to get rid of it since the original iPad in 2010.
There is still of course the iPhone and the iPad - but there's no iWatch or iTV, and certainly no iVision Pro. Across hardware, software, and services, Apple named around 30 products with an i following the success of the iMac
in 1998.
It's just a letter, but it's so strongly associated with Apple that to this day there are people who call the Apple Watch an iWatch.
They do so even though the last entirely new Apple products named with the
i prefix were iCloud and iAd in 2011. The last entirely new hardware device was the iPad in 2010.
When Apple began dropping the i
There is still the iPhone and the iPad, plus the iMac, and iCloud, and iMessage. But over the years, Apple has dropped the iPod and the iSight.
It's also dropped iBook - twice. First it was the name of Apple's consumer laptop, and then it was the app for buying and reading books on iPads.
That got renamed Apple Books, and the iBooks Store went the same way. The iTools, iDisk, iWeb, iChat, iSync, and iCal vanished alongside one you probably never noticed, an iTunes feature called iMix.
There's another one, of course, as iTunes is still referenced occasionally. The app is called Music and instead of selling tracks, Apple is pushing the Apple Music streaming service.
We do still have iOS and iPadOS, plus iMovie, but iPhoto has become Photos, and today iDVD sounds positive prehistoric.
The latter three are still officially part of what was called the iLife collection of apps, while Numbers, Pages, and Keynote are still ostensibly the iWork apps.
But the last release of a product called iLife was in 2010, and while iWork has fared better, its last boxed release was in 2011.
It may be just a coincidence, but the iPad was also the last new hardware device that Steve Jobs launched. It is definitely true that Jobs was a proponent of the i prefix because the man who thought of it says so.
In 2006, Apple gave one of its rare sneak peeks into the future when it showed off what was to become its television set-top box. At the time, it
was called "iTV" - but not for long.
The UK's Independent Television (ITV) network objected and the box was ultimately released as the Apple TV. At the time, ITV had been running in Britain for just over five decades, so it would have had no difficulty proving prior use in any legal case.
Apple has a tradition of not especially caring whether anyone else is
already using a name it wants. For the iPad, it may later have spent years
in litigation protecting the name iPad, for instance, but at the start it just bought the name from Fujitsu.
Or so much more recently that it's not clear whether this has been resolved or not, there is the case of the Apple Vision Pro. Before that can launch
in China, Apple is going to have to find a way to settle a trademark fight over the name.
"There might be marketing experts who say Apple would be crazy to drop the prefix - it's still in front of some of the greatest brands ever," says Segall, "but it can't be protected, and for too long there have been companies with 'i' internet-connected things, and that's an issue for
Apple, known for innovation."
He does also acknowledge that Apple may now be more risk averse over
changing names, like the way it dropped "PowerBook" in 2006 and replaced it with MacBook. Being so much larger a company now, and therefore with the potential for more jobs to be lost if things goes wrong, Apple may prefer
to play safe.
But then there is also the fact that the iPhone is the single most
successful product in history. Apple could change the name, but it would
need a reason and just not being as enamored of the letter i as it has before, isn't going to cut it.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/05/20/how-apple-has-steadily-been-dropping-the-i-from-its-devices-for-over-a-decade
How Apple has steadily been dropping the 'i' (which can't be trademarked)
On 2024-05-20 20:01:37 +0000, Enrico Papaloma said:
How Apple has steadily been dropping the 'i' (which can't be trademarked)
The "i' was added partly for the opposite reason. "iPad", "iPhone",
etc. are far easier to trademark than just "Pad" and "Phone", while
still retaining a simple name that tells you what is in the tin (an
"iPhone" is a phone).
On 5/20/2024 6:05 PM, Your Name wrote:
On 2024-05-20 20:01:37 +0000, Enrico Papaloma said:
The "i' was added partly for the opposite reason. "iPad", "iPhone",
How Apple has steadily been dropping the 'i' (which can't be trademarked) >>
etc. are far easier to trademark than just "Pad" and "Phone", while
still retaining a simple name that tells you what is in the tin (an
"iPhone" is a phone).
https://www.wired.com/story/the-end-of-iphone/
It was Segall who persuaded Jobs in 1998 to use "iMac" as a new computer
name instead of the internally-developed and rather dreadful moniker
MacMan. (Thank Segall that there was never such a thing as the ManPhone.)
The iMac - a then radical and lust-worthy machine devised as a ready-out-of-the-box gateway to the internet when other computers were challenging to take online-birthed a long line of Apple "i" products, from the defunct iBook (a curvy, candy-colored laptop derided in the '90s as "Barbie's toilet seat") through to Apple's still-current data storage platform, iCloud.
Segall, then a copywriter for advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day, remains intensely proud of his 12 years of word-wrangling for Jobs; the 74-year-old has written two best-selling books on his time working on Apple's
advertising account. And, via a career on the speaking circuit, he has benefited financially from his intimate association with Apple's little prefix, which initially merely meant a device was internet-ready.
True, but there are also many other quotes giving various supposed
"meanings" for the "i", which evolved over time alongside the various devices, services, and apps which used it. For example:
"Steve Jobs said the 'i' stands for 'internet, individual, instruct,
inform, [and] inspire,'"
Originally the "Apple Watch" was going to be called the "iWatch", but
Apple ran into issues when they tried to trademark that name:
"Apple was unable to name the Apple Watch the iWatch because of
trademark issues in multiple countries, including the U.S., UK,
Switzerland, and China."
<https://secureyourtrademark.com/blog/apple-watch-iwatch-trademark/>
There are lots of people who still do incorrectly call it the "Apple iWatch".
From the first iMac in the 1990s to today, the prefix "i" has symbolized Apple - but Apple has ...
There are lots of people who still do incorrectly call it the "Apple
iWatch".
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