waffle

Wannabe tech journalists and pundits (and Apple Computer) everywhere: lay off the fucking lowercase i.

How many times have you read an article about Apple, and it had a sentence saying something like “But all is not well in Apple’s iWorld”? I know I have. Did you get sickened? I know I did. And I’m here to tell you to drop it. Seriously.

So you figured out their naming scheme. Well, half their naming scheme. We still have PowerBook, MacBook Pro, Power Mac, Xserve, Mac mini, Boot Camp, Cinema Display, Finder, Dashboard, Safari, Mail, Xcode, Interface Builder, QuickTime, AirPort, Quartz, Spotlight, Apple Remote Desktop, Xsan, WebObjects, AppleScript, Bonjour, Final Cut Pro, Shake, Aperture, Soundtrack, Motion, DVD Studio Pro, Logic, .Mac (”dot mac”) and Mac OS X to bring up a few. But never mind that. You’re not interested in facts. You just figured out a limited part of their naming scheme, right? And you’re all the smarter for it, bud!

Sprinkling i-whatever in your articles aren’t going to make them better. In fact, more often than not, it’s a good way to tell that you’re a superficial hack. You probably spell Mac “MAC” and conflate Apple the company with Mac the computer, or at least did until very recently.

i-whatever is over. Even Apple realize that by now. The trend as far as Apple goes seems to be to stop using i-whatever names except for already established franchises (iPod, iTunes, iLife), much like they still use the name Mac for their computers.

So why am I so upset? It’s just words. Sure it’s just words. But to take another company and iconic naming style as an example, there’s a reason the McDonald’s documentary was called “Supersize me”. If you had been calling it “McFatso”, people would have rightfully reckoned you a dork. I’m saying “rightfully” because it’s a bad name — when compared to “Supersize me” in any case — and it doesn’t make sense.

And at the same level, i-whatever is horribly overused, and in fact wasn’t very good to begin with. This is not about me not liking it because “Apple didn’t bless it”. No. This is about me not liking it because it’s a stupid form in the first place and sadly it caught on. Just give it a fucking rest already.