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The i’s Have It. Had eNough?

Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 10:35 AM 5 comments Category: Meryl's Notes Blog

The i’s have iT. And some of us have had e-nough talks about the current trend of little i attached to words… iPod, iLife, iPhoto, and so on. He’s annoyed with the use of “i” particularly not e as in email, ebook…

i’Ve searched for other iWords and so far, all of them are related to Apple / Mac products. iDVD, iMovie, iWork, and iTunes. There are a handful of sites that use the i-word because they’re about Apple, Mac, or iPods. How can iForget?? iPaq! iPaq (2000) has been around longer than iPod (2001). But the article points out other iWords I’ve missed:

At a Target store the other day, the culprits included iWake (clock radio), iHome and iHome2go (clock radio and portable alarm with speakers), iCarPlay, iCable, iTV Link, and iPack. The last of these is a ‘computer backpack with integrated smart fabric interface.’

Then there was iPax, whose box promised, like some digital-era Caesar, ‘iStore, iCharge, iDownload.’

iCan understand why he’s annoyed with “i” more so than the “e” — because of its narcissistic tendencies. But this trend isn’t going away. In fact, we’ll probably see other letters of the alphabet getting their own wOrds.

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5 comments

Posted by: Prentiss Riddle on July 7th, 2006, 1:39 PM
Here’s an iWord that’s not related to Apple products: iSchool. Schools of Information at many universities, the outgrowth of what were once called schools of Library and Information Studies, are oftene referred to informally or even officially as “iSchools”. A case in point is the one at UT Austin, whose website is: http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/
Posted by: Jessica Fowler on July 7th, 2006, 2:30 PM
Funny how “i” replaced “e” as the clue to interactivity or electronic hipness. eBay, eThis and eThat. Now we have iThis and iThat.

I just figured the “i” thing was an Apple thing. I looked up the alarm clock cause that’s weird and found it hooks up to the iPod. Kind of like the iDog. The “i” says “Hey, I’m hip. I go with your Apple stuff.”
Posted by: Melody Thacker on July 8th, 2006, 4:20 PM
This post caught my eye as I’m a die hard Apple fan and admire the “i” marketing ploy. Seems everyone wants to jump on the band wagon for a piece of the action.

I don’t care about being hip or cool but but ilove my Mac!
Posted by: H.A. Page on July 13th, 2006, 10:03 PM
I titled my Flickr site “myeye”

i-i-i- ideas!

Cheers.
Posted by: Meryl on July 19th, 2006, 6:50 AM