Apple Moniker Madness
Moniker Madness
Apple has recently been taking steps to move away from the ‘Power’ lineup and ‘i-lineup’ to the ‘Mac’ lineup. The derivation of the name is simple enough. 1) If it is a Macintosh notebook, we get Mac(intosh) + (Note)Book = MacBook, and if it is a Pro(fessional) level product, you tack on the ‘Pro’. This would imply that the PowerMac will probably be renamed as Mac Pro (since it is not a notebook). The iMac name will remain unchanged of course because it already includes ‘Mac’ in it, and no ‘Power’, and it would be down right ridiculous to call it the MacMac.
What does this mean for other products that carry the i-moniker? Will iLife be renamed as MacLife, and iWork as MacWork? That remains to be seen, but needless to say that the iPod lineup will undoubtedly remain unchanged.
Here’s a fair-minded look at why this is a bad idea. Most early adopters didn’t really like the new name for the Powerbook, and shorten the name to MacBook as it is. Launching a budget lineup with that name only confuses people between the Pro and non-pro notebooks. I imagine a conversation going like this:
“Hey I’m thinking of buying a Mac”
“Hmm, what do you mean Mac, Big Mac?”
“No no, you know, Apple Mac…”
“Do you mean MacBook, MacBook Pro, or Mac Pro?”
“Umm… I think I’m just going to get a PC”
Get my drift?
Brand name recognition
The reason why Apple is doing this is clear. The ‘Power’ in the previous names referred to IBM’s PowerPC architecture on which the Macs were built. Now that Apple is using intel chips, it is understandable why Apple would want to stop advertising IBM’s architecture, and reflect the under-the-hood changes they have made. One way to think about it is that every time someone said PowerBook, it wasn’t necessarily clear to people outside a certain circle, what kind of a computer was being discussed. Now on the other hand, when you mention MacBook Pro, it is clear that it is an Apple Macintosh computer. I give Apple points for trying to increase brand name recognition and striving for some kind of consistency in naming their computers. Ultimately, however, I must refer back to the conversations that many a newbie will have, which will look something like the conversation mentioned above.
Given how much Apple invested in the old names, I wouldn’t have suggested that they change it. The battle will play out between increasing the Apple brand name recognition, and general buyer confusion between the models. This is much like telling a car maker to re-brand all of its cars because they changed something in the engine. Let’s hope that Steve Jobs knows what he is doing.
I would like to hear from you. Please leave a comment.
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Filed Under: Archive Categories • Computer Hardware
With the exception of the classic ThinkPad, name me another PC that actually has a memorable enough moniker to do its marketing budget justice and legitimately claim a cultural imprint in the top of our minds. People don’t buy PCs simply because of name familiarity or recognition (“Oh, I’m not confused by the names Dimension or Pavillion [read: less clear than any 'Mac' moniker], I’ll get one of those…”); people do, however, buy Macs for that reason, I believed it can be argued.
Your argument errs in assuming that anyone new to Macs knew the old product names in the first place. Steve Jobs is exactly right in making Apple’s computer family all “Mac”-named — they are the exception in name recognition, not the confusion (like the Satellite A105-S2716…Toshiba’s top seller on Amazon). For what company has more name recognition than Apple, what with the unparalleled success of the iPod, it’s literally replaced “mp3 player” in the cultural nomenclature (infuriating Dell DJ owners who regularly get asked about their “iPod”), like Kleenex with tissues or Xerox with copies. Apple’s become synonymous with anything i___ (much to the dismay of Creative…).
So who’s going to buy a PC instead simply because they’re confused by the names of the Mac line? Regardless of the investment in the old names, the changes thus far made are absolutely necessary — Apple is going after a new audience and the “Mac” moniker throughout is the clearest and most effective way (read: stupid-proof for the PC user portrayed in the example conversation) to do that.
Simply put, I don’t expect them to get “Mac” happy and do away with such classics as the iLife suite. They’re just consistently marketing and selling all who encounter your new Apple computer, regardless of which one you get (thus the “Get a Mac” campaign). And P.S., my money’s on “ProMac” (it shares the sonorous flow of the iMac name, and not the percussive mouthful of consonants that is its portable partner’s moniker).
That’s not exactly true. Early PowerBooks used 68k CPUs, not PPC.