[isaaclimdc]

why is it that "Power Mac" is two words, whilst "PowerBook" is one? im quite confused

these are the names that Apple uses on their advertising and website. any ideas?

[imitchellg5]

Confuses me too. PowerMac looks better and fits in with the rest of the product line MacBook PowerBook.

[TimmyDee51]

They're probably leftovers from when they first introduced them as "Power Macintosh". Soon it was shortened to "Power Mac" but retained the space.

[tooki]

It's because the "Power" refers to two different things.

The "Macintosh PowerBook" line was introduced in 1991, with Power just meaning "teh hotness". (Apple attempted to create no mental connection between the new, hot PowerBooks and the flopped Macintosh Portable.) The no-space "Power" prefix featured prominently in several of Apple's other cutting-edge products in the 90's: PowerTalk, PowerCD, and PowerLatch, for example.

The Power Mac[intosh] comes from the fact that it's the successor to the "Macintosh" series, but using a PowerPC chip. ("PowerPC" is a result of Apple's "power"-prefix obsession, not the cause of it!)

tooki

[dimmer]

POWER is actually an old IBM acronym (Power Optimized With Enhanced RISC) - the PowerPC was the cut-down desktop version of the POWER workstation chipset, and it just happened to fit Apple's existing 'Power' naming fixation.

[dpaanlka]

Macintosh desktops were always named with two words:

Macintosh II
Macintosh Quadra
Macintosh Centris
Macintosh LC
Macintosh Performa
Power Macintosh

[tooki]

Originally Posted by dimmer

POWER is actually an old IBM acronym (Power Optimized With Enhanced RISC) - the PowerPC was the cut-down desktop version of the POWER workstation chipset, and it just happened to fit Apple's existing 'Power' naming fixation.

Well, a backronym, really.

tooki

[isaaclimdc]

o i'm confused!!

[dimmer]

Don't sweat it issa. What's a space between friends?

tooki: I'm not sure that POWER is really a backronym, as it includes an IBM favorite technique of using the acronym -within- the acronym (The P in POWER is Power!), first popular with using the name FOIL for transparencies (FOIL being Foil Over Incandescent Light). But it is hella convenient, I'll admit!

[tooki]

I'm certain that IBM didn't pick a long-winded name and THEN afterwards realized "Hey! I'll be darned, it spells power!" No, it's a backronym.

What IBM is doing is what's really common in the UNIX world: the so-called "recursive acronyms" (many of which are really recursive backronyms). Things like the email program pine ("pine is not elm", elm being the earlier electronic mail program) and GNU ("GNU's Not UNIX").

tooki

[dimmer]

Probably not, but I'll also bet they didn't start with "We must call this POWER", now what words can we say that means. Knowing that it had to be a name of substance, and had to include RISC, but also be better than RISC... Unix commands do, in general, suck. ps -ef and all.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by dimmer

Probably not, but I'll also bet they didn't start with "We must call this POWER", now what words can we say that means.

Au contraire, I bet that is exactly what happened! It's totally common to come up with a cool word for a project, and then to invent a contorted full name for it. (That is the definition of a backronym.) IBM has a history of doing that. (If you want great examples of backronyms, though, just look at the military and other government. They LOVE that goofy stuff.)

tooki

[dimmer]

But why then would they take such a great name for a chip and put it in... an RS/#? And later a AS/#? Maybe the chip people had a better sense of fun that the system builders!

[tooki]

Quite possibly!

But the RS and AS series each stand for something sensible in the grand scheme of IBM's business at the time. RS = RISC System, AS/400 = Application System 400. Note that the AS/400 is now the "System i". IBM's been moving away from nerdy acronyms.

tooki