It is this Wednesday, September 7, at 7 p.m., that the always highly anticipated Apple keynote takes place where the Apple firm will present its new iPhone, the 14th of the name. But by the way, why do all Apple products have a name that starts with an “i”?
iPhone, iPad, iWatch, we say to ourselves that if one day they diversify into condiments, they will launch “i and herbs”. And yet originally Steve Jobs, the creator of Apple, didn’t want to hear about it. He finds it boring. Twice, we tried to sell him this “i”, it was for the iMac. And twice, Steve Jobs said “no”. He wanted to call him “MacMan” instead, a play on words with PacMan… Like what he wasn’t always inspired.
And what made him change his mind and adopt this “i”? He realized in 1998 that this “i” offered a lot of possibilities. Marketing in particular and that counts a lot at Apple. For him this “i” did not have one meaning but five! The “i” of the Internet of course, the promise at the time, it’ll make you smile, was that the iMac could connect to the web in less than 10 minutes!
An individual device for learning
And the other 4 meanings? The “i” of Individual… It’s my camera just for me. The “i” statement. My computer helps me to learn, to follow the news too, that’s the “i” for informant. Finally the “i” of inspiration. The Mac is used to create, write, compose music. This remains the case today with the iPhone or iPad. That’s why for Steve Jobs, it was “only the I suits me”!
Then we’re not going to nitpick, but wireless headsets are Airpods! Airpods, because iPod already existed. It was the digital music player launched in 2001 and officially discontinued last May. The iPod that showed that Steve Jobs was also very “i”. That of intransigent.
When Steve Jobs threw an iPod in an aquarium
When Apple engineers presented him with the very first prototype of the iPod, he barely looked at it. And just said “he is too fat”. We tell him that we have worked on it for months and months and that it is impossible to make it smaller. And there, Steve Jobs takes the iPod and throws it into an aquarium in the room.
When the prototype reaches the bottom of the jar, there are air bubbles that rise to the surface. And then Jobs said, “If there’s air bubbles, guys, that means there’s space in there. So you can make it smaller!” There it was the Ouch Pod but Ouch…A..I umlaut…E…Well they managed to make it smaller in the end.
>> Oh yeah? From Monday to Friday, Florian Gazan responds in one minute to all the essential, existential, completely absurd questions that cross your mind. Very useful or totally useless knowledge to shine in society, absolutely incredible anecdotes to share, amazing stories to tell. And each time, you say to yourself “Ah yeah?”. An RTL Originals podcast.
.