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

[Al Poulin]

Heh, Heh, starting a new rumor here.  As General Motors struggles to 
stay ahead of Toyota, they will come out with a new model vehicle and 
name it "Car."

Al Poulin
Anger, hate, and revenge are for the devil, forgiveness is for God, 
proactive self-defense is for the rest of us.

On Dec 26, 2005, at 4:53 AM, Vincent Cayenne wrote:

> 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]
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