ProductNames
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Apple's original iPhone marketers pondered such names as TriPod, Mobi and iPad
Ken Segall, Apple's former advertising head who coined its iProduct naming convention, told students at the University of Arizona that they could be pocketing a "TelePod" right now instead of an iPhone, according to 9to5Mac. That was among the now-strange-sounding names Cupertino pondered for the device, since one of the early concepts was a phone based on Apple's star product at the time, the iPod. Other names considered were "Mobi" and "TriPod," which was bandied about due to the device's three separate functions (phone, internet and iPod), along with iPad -- perhaps because we now know that the original iOS testbed was a tablet. In retrospect, it seems like a good thing that Apple rejected those choices ("let me show you that video on my TriPod"), but we can imagine some fur flying during marketing meet-ups to choose the ubiquitous name.
Steve Jobs reportedly disliked "Siri" name
Network World's Yoni Heisler attended Technori Pitch in Chicago yesterday, and related a story about Siri that not only sheds new light on the name of Apple's intelligent assistant, but on Steve Jobs' low opinion of the name. Technori Pitch is a monthly meeting where Chicago-based startups can tout what they're working on, and yesterday's speaker was none other than Dag Kittlaus -- one of the founders of Siri. The company was bought out by Apple in April of 2010 for US$200 million, and of course Siri became the outstanding feature of the iPhone 4S. We had always heard that the Siri name was a play on SRI International, the contract research institute founded by the trustees of Stanford University in 1946. Siri was a spinoff company of SRI before its purchase by Apple. However, in yesterday's talk, Kittlaus noted that "...Siri means in Norwegian, 'beautiful woman who leads you to victory.' I worked with a lady named Siri in Norway and wanted to name my daughter Siri and the domain was available. And also consumer companies need to focus on the fact that the name is easy to spell, is easy to say..." Kittlaus, who was the CEO of Siri, was invited to talk with Steve Jobs at one point for three hours at the late Apple CEO's home. Kittlaus noted that Jobs really didn't like the Siri name, but Kittlaus kept pushing him to keep the name. When Jobs couldn't find anything better, he decided to stick with Siri. Similar stories have come up about the naming of the iMac and iPad, both products that were given names that Jobs initially hated but eventually came to like.
Editorial: The problem with bad product names and what we can learn from it
Product names generally fall into one of four different categories: good, safe, meaningless and bad. There may be better categories to group them in, but we'll use these for the purpose of this editorial. In the first category I'd put something like Kindle, arguably one of the best new product names of the last ten years. iPhone and iPad, and their subsequent suffixed versions, are in the safe category. They're perfectly fine names for a cellphone and a tablet, but they're not as original or distinct as iMac or iPod were, which I'd consider good (iPod nano, shuffle and touch, on the other hand, are all safe names). In the meaningless category are things like the MSI GT683DXR or ASUS XU6280, one of which I just made up. Some meaningless names can also be good in their simplicity -- like the Nokia N9 or Nikon D3S -- but they are still basically nothing more than differentiators. This is an acceptable option. The names aren't just bad -- they're noise. In the bad category are the majority of smartphones released in the past few years. Rezound. Rhyme. Vivid. Epic. Sensation. Thrill. Skyrocket. Conquer. Triumph. Enlighten. Infuse. Prevail. Arrive. Can you name the company behind each phone? And those are just a few examples from this year. The names aren't just bad -- they're noise. Some names might fall into a fifth, slightly murkier okay category, but there are certainly more phones (and, increasingly, tablets) in the bad category than any other, and I'd argue that's a sign of a larger problem.
Xbox 360 naming guide: the new Xbox 360 vs. the Xbox 360 Original
It wasn't totally clear during Microsoft's E3 keynote, but the new Xbox has brought some name changes with it: the new shiny black console is officially "the new Xbox 360," while Microsoft's fact sheet refers to the original Xbox 360 as the... Xbox 360 Original. Clever, clever. The Original will still come in Elite and Arcade versions, which have new lower prices, so there's a chance we'll see something like the Xbox 360 Original Arcade, but hey -- that sounds like a Microsoft product name to us. We'll let you know if things change, or you can just call the new one the "Stealthbox" like us and avoid all this confusion entirely. Update: Things are changing fast -- according to a Microsoft representative, the Xbox 360 Original will still be sold while there's stock, but they're not making any more of them. Once they're gone, they're gone -- and we'd assume a new $199 variant of the new design will eventually be released to fill the void.
CES 2008 product names: Best of the worst
Perhaps they lacked a crackshot marketing team, the URL they wanted was camped by someone unreasonable, or -- sadly -- they just thought it was a good idea at the time. For whatever reason, these products and companies actually made it to fruition for our sheer enjoyment.%Gallery-13471% More Best of the Worst CES 2008 Adwatch: Best of the worst CES 2008 booth gimmickery: Best of the worst CES 2008 Crapgadget CES 2008: Fugliest headphones awards The fugliest laptop you'll see all day
