Remember when the iMac came out? And when they came out with five different "flavors"? How about when every single company that made a device encased in plastic, from the Nintendo 64 to the George Foreman Grill, decided that their products should be available in a variety of colors?
Most successful companies (and some that aren't) know how to copy a successful idea that someone else had, and Apple (at least while under the leadership of Steve Jobs) is a great source of original ideas.
Fortunately, the five flavors trend has died down (personally, I think the flower power iMac killed it). Unfortunately, names don't become obsolete as quickly as the technology they are applied to (blame the version numbers). Look at Safari and Garage Band, Apple is toning it back, and most of the others will likely follow suit. So, iNames and the similarly meaningless (how is an MP3 player an "internet pod"?) naming conventions are a trend that caught on more slowly than the colors, and will die out the same way...
...and even if they don't, the english language only has 26 letters... right?
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Let's get this out of the way...
[insert your own "Windows security = oxymoron" joke here]
Last time I checked, MacOS X was at least as "Unix-Based" (darwin) as Linux, if not more...
Remember when the iMac came out? And when they came out with five different "flavors"? How about when every single company that made a device encased in plastic, from the Nintendo 64 to the George Foreman Grill, decided that their products should be available in a variety of colors?
...and even if they don't, the english language only has 26 letters ... right?
Most successful companies (and some that aren't) know how to copy a successful idea that someone else had, and Apple (at least while under the leadership of Steve Jobs) is a great source of original ideas.
Fortunately, the five flavors trend has died down (personally, I think the flower power iMac killed it). Unfortunately, names don't become obsolete as quickly as the technology they are applied to (blame the version numbers). Look at Safari and Garage Band, Apple is toning it back, and most of the others will likely follow suit. So, iNames and the similarly meaningless (how is an MP3 player an "internet pod"?) naming conventions are a trend that caught on more slowly than the colors, and will die out the same way...