iPhone is dead! Long live Apple Phone!
Somewhere in an alternate universe, Tim Cook is busy rehearsing his September 10th event.
He’s nervous. He’s about to do something incredibly bold. Maybe even crazy.
Going through his show, he pauses when he gets to the iPhone branding slide, imagining how the audience’s collective jaw will drop.
Despite the rumors, there is no number 11. There’s no X, R, S, SE, Plus or Max in sight. And that’s just the tip of this boldness iceberg.
Alternate Tim takes a deep breath, then drops the bomb.
“Our new iPhones are so new, so totally amazing, so far beyond any iPhone we’ve made before, we’re not even calling them iPhones anymore,” he says. “Meet the new Apple Phones.”
After a 21-year run, the i is finally dead.
To i or not to i
As the guy who came up with the i, you might think I’d be sad if such a thing were to happen.
Au contraire.
I think it’s amazingly cool that the i-thing happened, but everything has a beginning and an end. The trick is knowing when to end.
Smarts and forward-thinking always beats clinging to the past.
The truth is, Apple has already made the i-decision. It’s been years since a new i-product appeared. Apple Watch, Apple Music, Apple Pay, Apple Card—all would be i-things under the old rules.
Know who else wanted to kill the i? Steve Jobs.
13 years ago, he told me “the i has run its course.” The only thing that kept his ax from falling was iMac. Hard to call it “Mac” when every Apple computer is a Mac.
“We’ll figure that out one day,” he said.
True, this was before iPhone or iPad. Those products certainly extended the the life of the i. But extended isn’t forever.
Today, the i is neither here nor there. Hanging on, but on its way out. It’s been banished for two reasons—
Lawsuits. Apple inspired a tsunami of i-products around the world. It’s nearly impossible to launch a new one without legal challenges.
Branding. Enhancing the Apple brand is far more important than enhancing the “i” sub-brand.
An alphanumeric mess
So yeah, the i needs to go. But let’s not blame iPhone’s history of bad naming on that innocent little creature.
The complex-ification of iPhone resulted from a shocking lack of common sense and historical perspective.
Apple has made plenty of mistakes, even when Steve was captain of the ship. The difference is, Steve would correct mistakes quickly, while iPhone naming confusion has been a 10-year saga of sadness.
Steve Jobs rescued us from horrendous Sculley-era product names. He demanded names that were simple and self-explanatory—like iPod touch and MacBook Air.
In what dimension would a customer ever pronounce “XR” as “Ten-R”? A pair of English letters is logically pronounced as two English letters.
On what planet can a customer tell which is the better phone, an XR or an XS? A jumble of letters offers zero product clarity.
Over the years, Apple leadership seems to have developed an immunity to common sense in iPhone naming.
Doubling down on dumb
Maybe Apple believes that deviating from a path they chose so long ago would show weakness.
But nobody is asking Tim Cook to stand up and say, “We named it wrong.” All he has to do is name it right.
Apple would not be admitting guilt or incompetence—it would only be making things simpler and better.
How can a company famous for change be so afraid to make a change? How can a company that puts the customer experience first believe that product names are exempt from the laws of common sense and clarity?
Much ado about nothing?
I’ve ranted about iPhone naming before. I know that some disagree.
The counter–argument is that iPhone sales over the years catapulted Apple to become the first trillion-dollar company, so … where exactly is the problem?
To that, I can only say that in the many years I worked with Steve Jobs, he never once said it was okay to get things 99% right. He demanded 100%.
There is no way to calculate how many customers or potential customers have been confused by iPhone naming. That’s not the point.
In Steve-speak, the point is—why confuse anyone when you can make things clear to everyone?
Alternate Tim has a plan
By all accounts, Tim Cook’s September 10th event will launch three new iPhones: iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max.
That’s a real improvement over the previous year’s naming fiasco—but my heart is still in the alternate universe.
That’s where iPhone naming will be fixed once and for all, instead of in drips and drabs.
That’s where Apple will move beyond numbers, letters and Roman numerals that do little to clarify the products.
That’s where Apple will make the overdue move to jettison the i, to make “Apple” the foundation of all product names.
That’s where Apple will introduce two amazing new iPhones—the Apple Phone and the Apple Phone Pro. The latter being offered in two sizes, just as you can get two sizes of iMac, MacBook and Apple Watch.
In the alternate universe, Apple will proudly show how good it is at turning complex into simple, just like in the good old days.
Heck, maybe they’ll even figure out a way to deal with the i in iMac.
Note to our Tim: If you can’t do it this year, please aim for next? A core Steve Jobs value is at stake. If you need some motivation, just imagine the headlines Alternate Tim is about to generate.
You write good. You should consider doing it for a living.
Ladies and gentlemen, the inimitable John Morrison. I’ve stolen some of my best ideas from him in our Apple past together.
Dear Sir
Tell us more.
You write well, yourself.
You should write more often.
To continue that thread, should it not be named something other than phone considering that is arguably the least used function of it? Either way, would love to see them have the “courage” to do this!
Funny you should mention this. Before the first iPhone was announced, Apple was still struggling with what to name it, given that Cisco already had a product called iPhone. Steve Jobs really wanted iPhone because that name would instantly tell people the category we were entering, but we needed alternate names ready just in case. In considering alternates, Steve’s biggest point was that it was three things in one: phone, internet device and music player. That’s one reason why “TriPod” was considered. (And yes, there was an obvious incongruity between wanting iPhone and also wanting a name that said it was three things in one—such was life with Steve.
Apple Pad…?
I don’t think coming up with sensical product naming would be so hard. And I disagree getting rid of the “i” is so important. The following makes sense to me:
Mac -> today’s iMac
Mac mini
Mac Pro
MacBook -> today’s MacBook Air
MacBook mini -> The now defunct 12″ MacBook’s successor.
MacBook Pro
iPhone -> iPhone XR successor
iPhone mini -> like an iPhone XR but in iPhone 5 size, what a product this would be!
iPhone Pro -> iPhone XS successor
iPad
iPad mini
iPad Pro
(Apple Watch, Apple TV, iPod are different beasts)
One complicating factor is Apple’s insistence on selling old iPhones. I understand why they don’t want to sell the “2016 iPhone” in 2019.
This. I agree completely. Sometimes I just go to the Apple Store near my house to hear customer after customer refer to the iPhones as ex-R and ex-S. The main reason I didn’t buy one last fall was simply refusing to spend a year carrying the best phone with the worst name.
“How can a company famous for change be so afraid to make a change?‘
Because it’s not the same company anymore. They only share a name.
@riza pacalioglu
“Because it’s not the same company anymore. They only share a name.”
100% This.
while apple makes some of the best stuff on the planet, they are run by dolts.
For the rest of my life i’ll never understand the selection of tim cook. he’s just terrible. pushing political agendas instead of products. a milque·toast “leader” who won the CEO lottery and has no idea how to spend the “money”.
while I do miss apple of old (as you aptly put it in a blog post), I’m a realist that understands all things must change and i’m ok with apple going through major changes. unless those are fundamental changes to the DNA of an organization as cook has, unfortunately, pressed into the architecture.
steve made wrong decisions. that’s how it goes.
cook… he wasn’t a wrong decision, he was a completely BAD decision. the worst decision jobs ever made for any company he owned.
The irony is he is not here to rectify it. If he were here then he would not have been required to take the decision at first place.
Ray – What political agenda is Tim Cook pushing? Renewable energy? Recycled materials? Equality in the workplace? Yes, how dare the CEO of the world’s most successful company have a point-of-view on anything. Suggesting Apple is run by dolts seems misinformed at best. What decisions has Tim Cook actually made to support this opinion?
It’s what you do when you aren’t shipping product. Cook distracts Wall St, the media and Apple fans with worthy causes, because the product road map is more like a train wreck. The only reason 3 phones shipped at the same time in 2019 is because they’re the same phones as 2018 with new guts. And that’s the flagship! MacPro, the former flagship lay dead in a ditch for years, Apple seemingly paralysed about what to do about it. The MacBook Pro still ships with an unreliable keyboard – any wonder Ive was fired.
Jobs’ laser focus came from sticking to the game. He had views about a lot of things, but it all took a back seat to THE PRODUCT. Cook may have been good at procurement, and that’s a big deal when you’re selling tens of millions of one product a quarter, but that’s not Apple’s only game. It’s not the game at all, it’s the prep. And everything, including shipping the magic iPhone has fallen apart. Innovation used to be every 2 years with iPhone, now it’s 4 years. And the Mac line has no touch or Pencil support, it’s stuck with a last-century OS, in hopes of spurring iPad sales. Cook has lost his way. Any wonder he needs to distract with social issues.
As Ken sir said the core steve jobs value is at stake.
Simplicity.
Interesting idea…if implemented it has wider naming scheme implications…leading to iOS become something like phoneOS, but where does that leave Apple iPad and iPadOS? Apple Pad and padOS…?🤷🏽♂️
On the Mac perhaps they could combine the iMac and iMac Pro and Mac Pro into Apple Mac, Apple Mac Plus and Apple Mac Pro? The former iMac Pro becoming a natural part of the consumer level Mac but for those who want more power without the sheer raw power (and price!) of a fully pro system?
On a related note the new iPhone and iPhone Pro/ Max Pro interestingly don’t have word iPhone on the back, just the Apple logo. A subtle hint that a naming change is coming..? 🤔
Really good piece, I love simple ideas that expose wider complexity and challenge us to embrace new thinking!👍🏾
It could be as simple as relating the name to the use. Stop making users think about complicated name and more about how they would use the product.
Well said Ken, you ever consider Apple? iKen, the fixer/make it simple!
Miss you Ken
xo
Think this would make more sense next year when It’s a new body and has 5g.