Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone
Spaced: How Apple gives blog writers apoplexy
Just when you think you're in the groove for the new iPhone 3G S, Apple goes and starts changing the game. The 3G S is, figuratively speaking, no more. Apple has quietly been changing all references on it site from 3G S to 3GS. The space between the G and the S has been removed.TidBITS broke the story in a piece aptly titled "Ding, Dong, the iPhone 3GS Space Is Dead". (We too did note the change in a story yesterday.) TUAW reader and personal tech review colleague Joachim Bean found the pair of images you see here. To the right is a cached image from June 15th. To the left is a shot from yesterday, June 22nd. Notice anything? Yes, it's been spacicided.
So will we miss the space? It was, as Engst points out, an awkward construction. But after forcing ourselves into the space habit, it may be a hard one to break.
So let's have a moment of silence for the 3G S space. It is dead, not stunned, and not pining for the fjords. Despite its brief moment in the pop culture sun, the 3G S space has expired and gone to meet its maker. Bereft of life, the space rests in peace. And if we at TUAW may occasionally nail it back into place by accident, be assured that it will be reinterred and pushing up daisies ASAP.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Chad Zeluff said 12:10PM on 6-23-2009
I never used the space in the first place. Doing Google searches for articles on the new phone would return better results with "3GS" instead of "3G S".
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MikeWard1701 said 1:04PM on 6-23-2009
Same here, the space seemed rather redundant and as you say the space made web searches troublesome unless wrapped in quotation marks.
Scott said 3:06PM on 6-23-2009
I am the only one out there that putting things in quotes NEVER works?!? From personal experience, putting "3G S" (yes, WITH quotes) in any search engine will give results that include 3GS, pages that include "3G" and "S", and my personal "favorites": "3g. S" and "3g, s". Is there some web programmer out there that can explain to me why when I search for the LITERAL string "3G S" all search engines ignore my request and give me the same results as if I had asked for 3G and S. What possible use is there in frustrating the heck out of users with this behavior?
Sorry for the rant, but this has been driving me nuts that last couple of weeks with the searches (and no, not for the iPhone) I've been doing (I'm looking at you Google, Yahoo!, and Bing).
P.S. I love Bing's "new" search engine. I searched for my company's web site as a test. Its number one result was my web site address that has been defunct for two years and listed its replacement web site (with my company's name as the domain name for god's sake) on page three. Oh, by the way, these are the exact same results that Live Search used to give.
astrosaurus said 12:11PM on 6-23-2009
Ha, I actually thought it was 3GS the entire time.
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Sam Jordan said 12:19PM on 6-23-2009
Slowest news day ever?
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brian said 3:16PM on 6-23-2009
You think TUAW is bad? Prepare for two thousand words from Gruber on the history of the space in Apple marketing.
Josh said 12:22PM on 6-23-2009
Did I really just waste 2 minutes reading this? Then another minute writing this, both are sad.
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Scott said 12:23PM on 6-23-2009
I guess it's a good thing they never put "3G S" on the phones.
loving my new 3GS by the way.
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Fred said 12:25PM on 6-23-2009
Beautiful Plumage
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Gabe said 1:04PM on 6-23-2009
3GS is a terrible name, and a mouthful. Not catchy at all. They should have just called it the iPhone-S, I would have bought that... S can still stand for speed, snappy or SEXY, because if there's one thing that's sexy, it's speed.
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MikeWard1701 said 1:08PM on 6-23-2009
Either that or iPhone 3G-Speed
Two wrongs said 12:35PM on 6-23-2009
Now it is even going to be harder to search for "3gs" on Google, since it thinks you means the plural of 3g -- no way to differentiate
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Colin said 12:52PM on 6-23-2009
It's still '3G S' all over the features page:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3g-s/
Even look at the URL above.
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Sidney San Martín said 2:34PM on 6-23-2009
This is really trippy:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3g-s/
http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3gs/
They both work.
William said 5:56PM on 6-23-2009
They've changed the URL and the page.
AndrewNoNumbers said 12:43PM on 6-23-2009
It sucks to have any new product name with part of the old product name in it (3GS vs 3G) because search engines can't figure it out (especially when you're looking for something on eBay).
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Josh said 12:45PM on 6-23-2009
oh my god?! This is news some how?
Seriously folks, make some stuff up before posting pointless junk like this.....
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EMoShunz said 12:46PM on 6-23-2009
lol, well written, good humor.
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Me said 12:57PM on 6-23-2009
The Apple //gs+ lives !
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alansky said 1:04PM on 6-23-2009
Slow news day, huh?
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