It’s Time For iApple To Stop Using “i” In Every iProduct.

This is a bit of an iRant, but hear me out. I’m tired of everything being named iThis or iThat regarding Apple and Mac products.

I honestly thought we were over that when Apple killed the iBook. iWas iWrong, iFear. Criminey. Is this stuff ever going to end?

Don’t get me wrong. The iMac was the start and it helped to save Apple from a near-death experience. The “i” supposedly stood for internet back in the day.

Apple made it so easy to connect a Mac to the internet that a child could do it. One TV commercial showed a child setting up a Mac and an adult setting up a Windows PC. Guess which one got it right and got it done quickly.

After that, we had the iBook, that candy-coated whimsical computer wannabe disguised as a plastic clamshell. From then on it was iThis and iThat all over the place.

Mac applications started gluing the “i” in front of their names. iBank and iBackup are two that I just reviewed and that whole iExperience made me nauseous. Well, maybe it was baby struggling in the iWomb. iWhatever.

A few years later and Apple decides to push boldly into the future. How? How about iLife, that ultra-cool suite of iApps that’s now free on every Mac. iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb. Hey, what was wrong with iGarageband? See? Apple was exercising restraint.

I have few doubts that someone in Apple’s marketing department said, “Hey, we’d better be careful, judicious, concerned, about this whole ‘i” stuff. It could get old about the time we finish naming everything iThis or iThat including iApple.”

So much for market research. What’s Apple do? They launch the iPod. Then the iTunes MUSIC Store. The iTalics show the problem with a store that combines “Tunes” and “Music” and then starts selling TV shows and movies.

Thankfully, Apple woke up and ditched the MUSIC from the Store, so it’s just iTunes Store. Only half the problem remains.

Early this year I thought Apple hit a brick wall with the iNonsense naming scheme. After all, the iPhone was logical, but Cisco had a trademark and a product. Fully asleep at the wheel, Cisco didn’t have the correct trademark and Apple swooped in and took it away.

There’s still a Cisco iPhone. Seriously. Apparently nobody in the world cares, including Cisco. The iPhone is Apple’s.

The problem with sticking an “i” in front of everything still remains on the horizon. The only problem with that is the horizon tends to get behind us very quickly. The buying public is fickle. Tastes change, sometimes overnight. What does Apple have planned when everyone is totally sick of iThis or iThat from Apple?

I honestly thought the new iMac introduced this summer would come with a new name, not the old iName. It didn’t. Apple has gone conservative on us. Predictable, even. Look for the next version of the iPhone to become the iPhone Extreme. The iPod nano and iPod touch and iPod classic and iPod shuffle are all iThis or iThat, too. Is there an iPod Extreme on the horizon?

It’s time for Apple to think different and move away from the iConic names of the past, and forge a new trail in product development. Just to show you that Microsoft still has some sense, some restraint, and are sensitive about their reputation for copying all things Apple, they didn’t introduce an iZune.