Anyone know what the"i" in Apple products mean? (1 Viewer)

[John Choi]

Does anyone know what the "i" stands for in iPod, iTunes, or iBook? I had thought the iMac was the first to use "i" and it had stood for internet. Is that still the case?

 

[NickSo]

iDunno

 

[Vlad D]

Too funny!

 

[Garrett Lundy]

iLLUMINATI! The secret society bent on world domination. You can do lots of evil, mysterious things when you "Think Different".

 

[Patrick Larkin]

Yes. It meant internet at the time and turned into a brand identity type thing. It was marketed as an easy all in one Internet solution when it came out. They had the commerical with the guy unboxing it, plugging in the keyboard and power and telephone line and getting online in minutes.

The e in eMac stands for education. It was originally made for ed markets only and then rolled out to the public after the demand for a 17" CRT machine was realized.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Then the eMac began outselling the iMac because the public didn't want to pay an extra $500 for a smaller LCD (As compared to the eMac's 17" CRT) screen when the computers themselves are similar performance-wise.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Well years and years ago intel put a lowercase i on some of their stuff, like i486. So my guess is that Apple wanted to do something that would confuse consumers into making them think their products were compatible with PCs.

Seriously though, you gotta wonder. The lowercase i is an Intel thing. In their logo it's spelled "intel". The reason they changed from 80486 to i486 was because numbers alone can't be trademarked, but letters and numbers can be, so they used the first letter from their name. There may have been some other products they did this with also. So it's funny that Apple would use a naming convention similar to the company powering their rivals' computers

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Wrong. "i486" became an industry term to distinguish a genuine Intel 486 from an AMD or other clone maker 486-class chip, and was preceded by i386 and i286. Intel didn't create or dictate the name.

Even if they could trademark "i486" there was nothing to stop AMD from introducing an "a486" to compete with the Intel chip and reinforce the idea in consumsers' minds that PCs built around both chips were essentially the same. So doing what you suggest would not have made any sense, because it wouldn't have the effect that Intel wanted. In fact the trademark problem and the desire to make it harder for competitors to create one-to-one identifications between their chips and Intel's products is what let to Intel's dropping the "number" nomenclature completely by branding what would have been the 80586 as the "Pentium" (from the Greek for "five") and using "word names" for chips ever since.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

it actually stands for iNexpensive.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Wrong. I have a CPU sitting right here that say "intel i486 DX". Both the 486 and DX are followed by TM symbols. Because Intel had licensed the rights to build early x86 chips to AMD they were allowed to produce other chips. AMD could have made chips called 80486 and Intel could do nothing about that because they can't trademark numbers. So to distinguish their's they trademarked the name "i486" and subsequent chips in the family were given names rather than numbers so they could further protect their brand.

If it was stricly an industry coined term, why would they trademark it? Also why would they have a line of embedded processors called i960 that is also trademarked?

 

[Thomas Newton]

PCs built around Intel 486s and AMD 486s WERE essentially the same. Not only did the chips accept the same instruction set, they used the same microcode. (AMD had rights to use Intel microcode as the result of an earlier deal that had given Intel something. Intel sued AMD, but the court ruled in AMD's favor.)

By contrast, computer users derided Cyrix "486" chips as being more or less souped-up 386 architecture chips with a more salable marketing name.

 

[Jim_F]

iNcompatible

 

[NickSo]

Uh oh, lets not start a mac bashing thread 'ere now...

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Did someone say mac bashing?

 

[Bill Eberhardt]

iNconceivable

 

[Stevan Lay]

iLectronic

 

[Alex-C]

blimey ! someone already posted inconceivable !