Source
r/apple•
TechRead3r

Apple Services/Product Naming

Has anyone noticed that Apple is slowly starting to adopt the google way of naming things. Google has Google Drive, Google Wallet, etc. Apple strayed away from the "i"Product naming and is now doing Apple Watch, Apple Music, etc. They've always had Apple in front of most of the products like Apple iPhone and Apple iPad but now I feel like it has been Apple "Product/Service" instead of Apple "iProduct/iService" Anyone else see this trend?

Posted Jun 18, 2015, 11:38 PM UTC

615
theWaveTourist•

I think everyone's noticed

8
roastrain•

iThink

2
Ke7een•

iCloud Drive? iMessage? iTunes?

The "i" product naming is definitely still there.

3
FrameWork0•

Yeah but we're talking as of recently. All the ones were you mentioned were probably before they decided to ditch the "i"

3
Ke7een•

Not necessarily... iCloud Drive was revealed at last years WWDC.

The only "Apple X" products that I can think of on the spot are Apple Watch, Music, Pay, and that's it...

2
TechRead3rOP•

Those products are also all products launched within the last 12 months. So it seems like they're starting to from this point forward.

3
FrameWork0•

Yeah those were announced later last year which is when they switched away from the i

0
utnow•

On the software end of things this is nothing new. Pages. Numbers. Calculator. Mail. Calander. Reminders. In a world of Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. they've always aimed at the plainest possible names.

There have been some notable exceptions to be sure... Calling it Music doesn't differentiate enough from googles offerings et al. But yeah... There's been a shift away from iProducts to Apple Products.

2
afishinacloud•

A lot of companies outside of Apple have started using the 'i' branding. It makes sense for Apple to phase it out of their portfolio.

2
Sendmeloveletters•

This is the reason. Nobody can use their logo the way they use the i.

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
im2slick4u•

I think they're keeping the 'i' just using it less often. The 'i' is kind of a personal and fun nomenclature. This works things like "iPod" since it is a personal and fun device but then if you look at the Apple Watch, it would be hard to sell a $17,000 "iWatch" so it makes sense why they chose to go an alternative route.

1
mredofcourse•

Apple has been using both for a long time, see Apple TV.

Using the i is tough because of all the trademark issues involved around the world. It's expensive, and incredibly time consuming.

For generic words, I don't expect Apple to use the i. For words that are otherwise easy to trademark, I would expect Apple to use the i when it doesn't conflict with the product description (i was never used on something Pro).

I think with the Apple Watch, getting the i was too hard/expensive/time consuming/distracting, so Apple went with Apple Watch. But this was a trade-off. Had the iWatch trademark been easy to obtain, I think Apple would've gone with it.

They would've rather had people refer to it as iWatch rather than just Watch since people are more likely to drop the Apple than they are the i when referring to the product.

1
aetherspqr•

I'm pretty sure it's to differentiate between the Jobs era work and the Cook era work.

The 'i' stood for Interim as Steve was called the iCEO. It was a joke that no longer applies now that Steve is gone.

1
mrkite77•

It's a bit funny that Steve Jobs removed the apple key from the keyboard because he thought it was tacky to have their logo everywhere.

1
quintsreddit•

"i" used to stand for Internet. I think now what's happening is other companies are copyrighting the terms for any conceivable thing Apple could possibly make, so Apple just said "screw it, we'll throw our logo in front of it. Copyright that, jerks"

0