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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

Side note along with this thought, I feel like Apple is going through some kind of naming transition in its lineup:

Mac<thing>: e.g. Macbook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro

i<thing>: iPod, iPhone, iPad, iSight

Apple <thing>: Apple watch, Apple pencil

I think the Apple one is the worst, because <thing> seems to be common non-trademarked words and has a weird marketing exec "let's get the branding out there!" strategy.

And now it kind of smells like they might be thinking about going to a "Smart <thing>" naming scheme.

It makes calling things kind of hard and schizophrenic, most people just default to i<thing> when they don't know what to call it. I hear iWatch at least once a week.

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They're copying the facebook-esque thing of grabbing the base word and making that the brand. IE facebook messenger is "messenger", compared to google messenger which is "gchat". Calendar vs "gcal", and so on.

Facebook effectively owns the word "like" at this point, has "internet.com", and so on.

Apple wants people to be calling the "Apple Watch" just "the Watch".

I don't know about "the Watch"; it's more that they constantly push you to say things like "I'm using my iPhone" rather than "I'm using my phone", whereas with the "Apple" products, they seem to encourage you to just mentally commoditize them and say "I'm using my watch."

I could hazard a guess at the reason, too—everyone knows what a phone or a tablet (or a laptop, or a PC) is, and theirs don't break from the trend, so they need to differentiate their product in those lines using the name. Whereas, with the "watch" and the "pencil", they're making a new thing that attempts to redefine the category it's in, and so they want people to start using that name for the category as a whole. Specifically, they want people to think of any accessory-computer used for passive alerts and alarms and checking notifications as a "watch"; and a stylus used primarily for finesse drawing with extra sensory features to enable that as a "pencil." (The latter is also, I think, trying to avoid the current image of a "stylus" as effectively a prosthetic finger for those dumb devices that can't read your touches without it.)

I don't think Facebook can make their messenger a memorable brand. The actual brand that people think about is Facebook. Messengers these days are a dime and a dozen, with Facebook's messenger being popular because it is "at hand", but that's due to people being active on Facebook. But it's not like Facebook has multiple products, their messenger being part of what Facebook is. Before Facebook my friends where using Yahoo! Messenger. And now it's pretty much dead.

"gchat" was actually Google Chat and was about voice and video chat. Now it was replaced by Google Hangouts. It's a pretty cool service, except that they have had two problems - their fuckup with Google+ and the popularity of Skype. Now Skype is a very memorable brand. And it has lots of problems, but people keep using it because it works for group video/audio calls and because it has good prices on calling phone numbers - like, Skype has a freaking monopoly on emigrants and their families or on companies working with remote consultants or employees.

In other words, I don't think the actual name matters that much, plus if you pick a weird word you might get more out of it. Googling is now a verb in the dictionary and tweeting should probably be as well.

> <thing> seems to be common non-trademarked words

Hasn't stopped Microsoft being successful with this strategy, e.g. Office, Word, Windows, etc.

Those are metaphors and metonyms. MS Word is not a word. MS Office is not an office. Facebook Messenger is literally a thing that carries messages. Apple Watch is literally a watch.

Apple Watch is to watches as iPhone is to phones. In both cases they are supersets of what their name suggests, where the consumed set is a tiny fraction of their purpose.

Although SQL Server is an SQL server :)

To be fair, MS Word is two letters, a space and a word.

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