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Filed under: Hardware, Cult of Mac, iMac, Steve Jobs, Apple History

An interview with the man behind the name "iMac"

This is a cool interview over at Cult of Mac -- you've heard of Steve Jobs of course, you know who Jonathan Ive is, you might have heard of Rob Janoff, but do you know Ken Segall's name? He's a former creative director from TBWA\Chiat\Day, and he has two claims to Apple fame: he worked on the "Think Different" campaign, and he's responsible for coming up with the one letter that may have defined the modern-day Apple as we know it. That's right, he named the iMac.

The writeup is fascinating, even if you get the sense that we're looking through the lens of history, and things may not happened quite as stylishly as they seem. Jobs apparently showed the Bondi Blue iMac to the ad team, and while he originally "hated" the name, he obviously came around -- though Segall apparently never got the satisfaction of official approval.

He closes with an interesting sentiment about the company, too: at Apple, it's always about moving forward to the next big thing, and everything is product-centered, not number-driven. Segall says he was around for a few Jobs "flare-ups," but if there was a fit thrown, it was always in trying to keep the company moving forward as quickly as possible.

Interesting stuff. It's quite a legacy, too -- the iMac was originally called so because it was a Mac that connected to the Internet, but obviously since then, the i has become symbolic of many other things, all the way up to iLife, the iPod, and the iPhone. You tend to forget, after all of the millions of dollars and the culture and promotion, that it all came from the head of a guy in a conference room looking at a computer Jobs just pulled the cloth off of.

Filed under: iPod Family, Cult of Mac

The iProduct

E-Commerce News asks what has one letter done to gadgetry? Adding an "i" to the start of your product name instantly identifies it as being intended for, or associated with, the iPod. Howard Kim of iLuv deliberately added an i to his company's product line while Tim V. Kolton of V-Moda headphones i-avoided. He didn't want to get lost in the crowd. Seems to me that if a single letter sends a powerful sales message to potential customers you'd be silly not to i your product. What do you think?

Filed under: Hardware, OS, Software, Tips and tricks

Apple Support doc: Mac maintenance Quick Assist

Apple has released a "Mac Maintenance Quick Assist" support document that is more or less a 10-step guide aimed at beginners for taking care of their Mac, both inside and out. These steps include good, basic practices such as using relevant names for files instead of "DSC_00001.jpg," while also recommending that you occasionally clean your Mac (duh).

I was surprised to see a few tips make this list, however. The first: Check for viruses. "Macs don't get anywhere near the amount of viruses that Windows PCs are prone to, but that doesn't mean that they can't get infected," reads tip #8. I guess the guys who wrote this article didn't get the memo from the team who made the "Macs don't get viruses" TV commercials. The other odd tips deal with Mac maintenance stuff, like repairing permissions and defragging your hard drive. I was under the impression that, since Panther, Mac OS X defragged itself. On the permissions topic, there has been a lot of chatter over the last couple of months about whether repairing permissions is actually useful. Just check out the pseudo-series John Gruber had on the topic.

All in all, I think I was actually a little frightened by evidence of even cheesier one-liners making their way into Apple's support docs: "As a Mac user, you won't have to do windows, but you will need to do some housekeeping!" Yuk yuk.

Filed under: Humor, Software

On marketing, and a thanks to Apple's department

While chatting with my brother this afternoon about (what else) this whole Boot Camp thing and its ramifications, he brought up a great point concerning Apple's marketing and a good choice they made with this new software:

They didn't call it "iBoot."

Bonus points for not calling it "iBooty" either. Thanks guys.

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