What's in a definite article?
Watch Steve Jobs’ iPhone keynote. Or watch Steve Jobs’ original introduction of iPod. Or read copy on Apple’s site about iMac. What’s missing? Why, English’s most common word.
What does that do for those products? It anthropomorphizes them. As this discussion of Segway demonstrates, anthropomorphization of objects is important to Steve.
Affixing a definite article relegates a device to simple object status. Without it, “iPod,” “iMac,” “iPhone” are not labels, but names, which provides familiarity, strengthening emotional connections between device and its owner.
There are 7 comments on this idea.
[...] Steve Jobs is a master showman Whether you’re a member of the Cult of Mac or think we’re all a bunch of arrogant aesthetes, you have to admit that Steve Jobs is a master showman. Adaptive Path knows part of the reason why. I also think it’s because they focus so much time on design and user experience, but then again I could be worshiping at the alter of lifestyle marketing. Published Monday, January 22, 2007 6:28 PM by Joe Eastham [...]
Do you think this will make my Wikipedia stocks rise? :) http://iam.always.online.fr/tr.php?wordid=2315
the death of a good idea
A quick follow up to my last post…
Matt over at 37signals posted a few external quotes about the curse of knowledge. Basically the point is that an idea is only good if it can be communicated well, and the smarter a person is in their field of e…
[...] Adaptive Path’s seems as good as any, to me. I’ve actually always liked the way its just iPod. [...]
[...] even back in 1984, there was no definite article. You get phrases like “With Macintosh, you’re in charge.” No “the”s [...]
[...] even back in 1984, there was no definite article. You get phrases like “With Macintosh, you’re in charge.” No “the”s or [...]
[...] between how they refer to Windows and how they refer to OS X. You’ll notice that no definite article is used when referring to Windows, but one is used when referring to Mac OS (which really ought to [...]
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