[X-Newbies] Reasons for names? (was: How to Use Mail & Address Book (was: No Subject))

[Vincent Cayenne]

X;{ :-)

A touch of flu just in time to spoil my Christmas dinner, so I'm 
needlessly Scrooging here:

At 12:22 AM -0500 12/26/05, Charles Martin wrote:
>Everything a Mac does (and says about itself) is there for good reason.

...except for Apple's raving insanity in naming applications: which 
geniuses signed off on the generic "Mail", "Address Book", and 
"Pages"? These twits obviously were shuttered in a developer's 
paradise with nice little code names and a *need* to ensure that 
there were no leaks about the precious projects? 'Cause out in the 
real world, trying to use resources like Google to isolate anything 
involving those apps, trying to hold a conversation with someone 
unfamiliar with the current Mac, trying to explain a 
multi-application** technique - these all suffer from those names.

Several applications have *an* address book, which must be noted as 
distinct from *the* Address Book app. A conversation about a problem 
goes blooey at the "OK, now open Mail" point when the user launches 
their browser and goes to the web mail (or opens mail, in another 
client).

I think when the "i" prefix started being made fun of, Steve decided 
"OK, we'll just leave it off and see how you like it!".

Ah well, I don't suppose I'd have been impressed by the names iMail 
and iPages anyway. And iBook was already taken. :-)



** example "multi-application" technique: emailing a bunch of holiday 
photos to a family member. A friend called me up earlier, while 
already on a call to their family computer wiz (all-PC) who was 
trying to instruct her in sending her batch of photos. Frustrated by 
discussion of "compression, zip, properties", she called for more 
help. I said "Forget all the tech stuff, make an album with the 
photos, use the Share menu and email it. She did so, chose 
medium-size, got an OK on the file size from the wiz, was momentarily 
disconcerted by the delay as iPhoto did its thing before handing off 
to Mail.app, and was then OK and done. But the PC wiz, a good guy who 
knows exactly what he's about, couldn't quite get any handle on what 
I'd told her to do. Statements like "OK, now just wait for Mail to 
open with the message just needing addressing." or "If the address is 
already in your Address Book..." carry no audio clues about the 
application being used.

If you don't know, you're waiting for the rest of the info - Outlook? 
Eudora? Web client? An Apple-specific app? What're you using? Yes, 
yes, I know it's mail, but what is the *name* of the program?

Those who've been helping end users for any length of time are 
accustomed to the users' tendency to impart generic terms. It's not 
Internet Explorer or Mozilla FireFox, it's "my Internet". It's not 
Outlook Express, it's "my email". When these helpers hear Mac users 
say "Mail" and "Address Book", they're already leaping into 
clarification mode.
-- 
'tis as said. [Reality is defined by being described]