The let's-boycott-stupid-PowerBook-renaming thread

[ecirtap]

I got the solution - it should have been iMac Book Pro (i standing for Intel)... so everybody knows it is the same company manufacturing iMacs... and everybody might be a little more confused... LOL.

patrice
http://www.patriceschneider.com/apple-osx/blog/

[Mikuro]

Originally Posted by ecirtap

I got the solution - it should have been iMac Book Pro (i standing for Intel)... so everybody knows it is the same company manufacturing iMacs... and everybody might be a little more confused... LOL.

I think Apple likes to reserve the "i" moniker for consumer products rather than their pro ones. Power Mac, PowerBook, Final Cut, DVD Studio Pro, etc. are all pro products. iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, iMac, and iBook are all consumer products. I think that distinction is important from a branding perspective.

That begs the question, why call it the "Pro" at all? Since they're keeping the "i" in iMac, I assume they'll do the same for the iBook. They never felt the need to call their old pro models PowerBook Pro or Power Mac Pro, so why the extra word now? Although I must admit that without the "Pro", "MacBook" sure doesn't sound like a professional product name. That's one reason I think it's a bad name; whatever the official title is, everyone will naturally just call them MacBooks.

[iball]

$20 says Stevie didn't outsource to a consulting firm for that name.
Either he came up with it or an Apple employee did and Stevie liked it.
Either way, guess who was the one to make the final go-ahead decision on the name "MacBook"?
That's right, your "Apple God", Steve Jobs.
So if you hate the name, then hate him for deciding on it.

[doemel]

Originally Posted by iball

That's right, your "Apple God", Steve Jobs.
So if you hate the name, then hate him for deciding on it.

But then again, nobody's perfect, right? Everybody makes mistakes.

[doemel]

OK, nobody seems to care too much. I for my part have found a way of dealing with the situation: I'll just call it

The computer formerly known as Powerbook

On the long run I guess I'll have to get used to whatever name Apple thinks of. After all I got used to the name "iMac" shortly after I got one back in '98.

[dmetzcher]

[QUOTE=fryke]Okay. You go boycott it, I won't. I don't particularly _like_ "MacBook" as a name, but that's what they're called.QUOTE]
Agreed. I think the name stinks, but no one is going to boycott anything.

[ergo proxy]

I think the Mac Book pro name will save them the trouble of renaming it
again in the future. If they went with the (for eg.)Intel Book name, what happens if Apple starts using AMD, cell or even revert to PPC in the future?

I don't really mind the MacBook pro name, In my case, only those who own
a Mac will call it Powerbook, everyone else will just call it a Mac or a Mac laptop.

[dmetzcher]

Originally Posted by ergo proxy

If they went with the (for eg.)Intel Book name, what happens if Apple starts using AMD, cell or even revert to PPC in the future?

There is no way that Apple would have ever used the word "Intel" in the name of any one of their machines. Everyone else calls them "Intel Macs", but Apple does not, and will not. The same goes for the term "WinTel", which is an industry term, and not one used by Microsoft. It has nothing to do with the fact that they might use AMD chips in the future. It has everything to do with the fact that no company is willing to highlight another organization in a place as prominent as the name of their product.

I actually hate the terms "Intel Mac", "MacTel", and "MacIntel", and prefer "Intel-based Mac". Intel really has nothing at all to do with the machine. It's just the chip. I can't wait until they are all Intel-based, and the PowerPC machines have long faded, so we can just refer to them as Macs.

As far as AMD is concerned (and this is way off-topic, I know), I hope they do start putting their chips in the Macs after a while. A company like Intel should not have so much power.