Let’s call it the iTube
posted in Strategy |Apple this week previewed it’s new set-top box, dubbed the iTV, a codename to be replaced when the product officially launches in early 2007 (Macworld?). Apple rumor site, blogs and discussion forums are likely to tackle the naming issue, so here’s my entry: iTube.
Granted, most new TVs in general — and the ones targeted by Apple with this device in particular — don’t use cathode ray tubes. They are LCD, plasma, DLP or rear-projection LCD technologies. So the tube moniker may seem erroneous. But do most people interact with YouTube.com via a CRT? Not likely. Yet YouTube as a brand has quickly become a household word.
In some respects, the iTV is the antithesis of YouTube. The latter allows you to upload your videos and put them out their for the world to see. The former, on the other hand, allows you to watch your videos in the privacy of your own living room. With YouTube, all the videos are there for “you” to view. With iTV, only “I” can view them. The word tube is just a fun, common way to refer to TVs and the act of watching videos.
Then there’s the metaphoric tube that exists between your computer and the device to shuttle your videos, music, photos and commands back and forth. Like the old vacuum tubes still used in some bank drive-ins, the iTV’s tube is either a virtual wireless one or the Ethernet cable you run between devices.
iTube is also a familiar iWord for the Apple lexicon, taking it’s place alongside the venerable iPod and iTunes, as well as less familiar but pervasive iCal, iChat, iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, iSync, iWeb, and iWork. Eh, okay, so the iWord is overdone. Safari is a pretty good name, Mail is not. What would you call the iTV?
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