In the 1990s, E ruled. Derived from “E-mail,” and hence from “electronic,” everything was e-this and e-that and e-the-other. Then I took over, encroaching on its kingdom until E was all but vanquished. This symbolic victory was well-marked when Apple killed off the eMac in favor of a new low-end iMac. Forget the “underlying reasons” given: this was vowel war.
But I too is boring. BBG reader Samf writes….
I’m done with I. I’m ready for another letter. I nominate p.
We could have the pPod, the pBasket, the pBrain…whatever. It’ll be fun. C’mon marketing people. iStuff is so 2006. It’s time to make with the p!
Make mine a p-p-p-p-Powerbook!
But what are the other choices? Not all are equally good. Y turns a name into a question, sapping it of power. Z is hopelessly unfashionable. G is just plain naughty. Q has a steeple-fingered intellectualism best left to software. X is beating the memorial plaque that commemorates the fact there was once a dead horse at this location.
Vowels are the obvious choices, but A (and with it H) still bears a certain cold-war connotation. O is frivolous, evoking internet memes (oMac! oRLY?). And U is too busy invading Poland.
Would a number be superior? A nonalphanumeric character, perhaps? â™! My vote goes with a dipthong. Euphone!
i vote for the unpronounceable Prince symbol.
This is stupid but how about multiple letters that, when you stick them together in a straight line, they make different sounds and stuff?
I support the schwa…Hold on, I’m getting a call on my É™Phone.
I was always partial to the diaeresis Р̦
What about Cyrillic & Greek? Ъ is silent in Russian, for example.
â‚Phone
※Mac
↑Book
∀Pod
∃Tunes
â€Life
âš‚Photo
☠Movie
☢Dock
☣Life
☤Oath
☥Something
My favorite prefix char, interrobang:
‽Phone
‽Mac
‽Book
‽Pod
‽Tunes
‽Life
‽Photo
‽Movie
Let’s just flip the i upside down, and make it a “!”.
Lots of interesting connotations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclamation_mark#Use_in_various_fields
Although I imagine you could get back into “too naughty” territory, if common pronunciation ends up having people line up for blocks to get the new bangphone.
All my electronics already come with a symbol: $.
I vote for #|, the hash-pipe.
That, or for reconsideration of Z. I mean, it’s multipurpose. You get a zee-phone AND a zed-phone with just one letter!
Or maybe R. The industry claims all tech users are pirates anyways, so why not an arrrrrrr-pod?
Do we need to add a letter? I vote for unnecessary umlauts. It works for Motörhead…
@9
Nope, can’t use ‘Z’ it belongs to Zilog. Just ask them.
@ roryrhorerton: You take that back! Motörhead’s umlaut’s are necessary!
How about that most mis-used letter of all?
I give you …. the almighty M !!
“Let me get that … my mmmmPhone is ringing.”
n for things you need
w for things you just want
Chinese characters. Hang on, I’ve got a call coming in on my ç›®Phone.
Don’t forget the \Pod.
‘i’ is 4 letters after ‘e’ so clearly, by linear extrapolation, the next letter should be ‘m’.
e.fgh.i.jkl.m
mPhone
mBook
Kind of has a ring to it, even.
I also am in favor of r. It sounds good pronounced in front of consonants, and has a similar simplicity of form to the ‘i’.
t
tOnly choice
tOne you want
tBook. tPhone. tCube.
Put it all into your tBag and for tCoffee Shop
a Paamayim Nekudotayim would be nice
HEAD for tCoffee Shop.
I tSuck.
Definitely the umlauted u: ü. Not only does it add a nice pretentious sound when prepended to a noun– üPhone, üNet, üDisk, and so forth– but per Pynchon, it can be held:
üüüüüüüüüüüüüü
to yield a fine onomatopoeia for someone throwing up.
What about a nice rolled r?
rrrPod.
The mp3 device for cozy kittens everywhere.
Not @, please. Not only because it has already become a cliche, but because people insist on misreading it as an “ao” combination rather than the “ea” (“each”) it seems to have been derived from.
And we probably want to avoid period too, after the dot-whatever hype.
#8 is very hard to argue with — all my consumer electronics have been preceded by $’s too.
I’d go for P, especially when it’s silent. My favourite author is called PTerry already anyway.
“u” is the obvious choice. It could make the computer personal again ™.
¿copter
@7: No, no, clearly the ! should be pronounced like in African click languages.
↑dog? What’s updog?
neu.
It’s like NEW and NEUTRON! It’s perfect. For the atomic age!!!
neuPhone.
neuPod.
neuWipes.
Bring back runes:
ᚢPhone (ur-Phone)
á›—Pod (mann-Pod)
áš¹Crap (wynn-Crap)
@27
Are you by any chance reading “Before the Dawn” by Nicholas Wade? it discusses those click languages in its earlier chapters, and I’m reading it presently. Perhaps the “!”s have been clicking around in my subconscious?
it has to be an apostrophe
‘phone
‘book
‘thingumy
and it will really annoy certain people too.
@32:
Not to mention that they would render as comments in Visual Basic…
…not that I know Visual Basic, you understand.
#7 has the right idea, playing on the multiple connotations of “!”
Announcing the 3G !Phone
8 MB model starting at $6!* ** ***
OMG! It’s the !Phone!!!1!1!11
* 6! represents 6 factorial
** mandatory 2-year service contract, total cost $7!
*** the !Phone != the iPhone
I too vote for the !, but not for the reason Greenglyph suggests.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj-1kp777NM
Codeman, was it from this video that you learned about how the ! is a click, or did you actually know that from, you know, the real world?
I was going to suggest Q but I suspect it suffers from the same sorts of claims as Z.
Interrobang was next, although also mentioned already.
I might be partial to Pf, or the eszett (ß).
I think P could work the best.
Examples
Powerpoint => pPoint
Photoshop => pShop
Password => pWord
Toiletpaper => pPaper
I wote for any Swedish characters, come on! Give us a break! All we have are reindeer and umlauts, might as well get our spot in the sun until it’s time to change the character again…
! is good as long as it is pronounced ‘bang’.
But personally I like the octothorpe: #
p already has some limited use as a prefix. It is short for pseudo. It is used to mean an imitation of sorts. champagne thats not made in the champagne region would be pChampagne, lambic made outside the brussles region is pLambic, pBrie, and so forth.
@37:
Wasn’t Octo-Thorpe the eight-armed gold-medalist in the Sydney Olympic Games?
µ
whats this ?
*waggles forefinger slighty*
.
.
.
.
its a microwave “BAH BOOM TSSCH”
@Angstrom:
‘ may cause problems for people, but the real thing it will wreak havok on is stupid systems that can’t handle apostrophes. Just scope out the Apostrophe Fail group on Flickr for some examples (started by my friend and his family – with the surname O’Connor)
Just F everything! I do and I’m happy with that.
I think they should invent the names first, and THEN come up with a gadget for it.
“Introducing: the qZir!”
“qZirb! What’s a qZir?”
“Um, we’re working on that!”
(yes, I’m going with q)
I think F could work, too.
Or maybe we could just go with fnord!
Obviously, the letter Y. Why? Because it turns every product into its own interrogatory sentence fragment when spoken.
Yphone? Sure. Why not?
Þpod
Thorny Goodness.
#33: Hm. And if we pronounce the ‘ as a glottal stop — or not at all — it essentially vanishes in normal conversation and remains strictly a visual branding cue. Which may be reason enough to recommend it.
I’d rather go one step further: the space character. Completely silent, invisible — “It’s just a phone.”
Timothy O’Brien I think accurately points out that “2.0″ is the new modifier: The Next Web: “Web * e^(t/Tau)” (or “Just Say No to 2.0″) – O’Reilly Broadcast