The case for casings

Let's look at some of Apple's products:

• iPod
• iPod nano / iPod photo / iPod shuffle
• iMac
  
• Mac mini
• MacBook Pro
• Power Mac
  
• Xserve
• iLife / iWork
  

Sometimes they uppercase the first letter (iPod, iMac, iLife) sometimes not (Xserve, why not xServe?). Sometimes, I assume since it's part of the proper name, the second word is uppercased (MacBook Pro) sometimes that proper name reasoning fails (iPod nano, Mac mini).

I think the logic is consumer items get a lowercased 'i' prefix (iPod, iMac, iLife) and pro items get uppercased first letters. Oh, but then MacBook is uppercased, and iWork is lowercased. Maybe music stuff is lower, Mac stuff is upper? No, that doesn't work either: iLife, iWork, iMac. Maybe, simply, if the first letter is 'i' then it has to be lowercased. And second words get uppercased only if the editor feels like it.

Hmm....

Some people uppercase Mac like this: MAC. I assume that's so it parallels the fact that PC is uppercased. But of course I always think of MAC Addresses since, as an uppercased item, I assume it's an acronym (like PC is an acronym).

And, speaking of Macs, what happened to the word "Macintosh"? Search Apple's iMac, MacBook, Power Mac, and many other pages for Macintosh and you won't find it. I found it just once on a Mac mini page, and, very rarely on all the pages that discuss Mac OS X.

Where am I going with this? No idea. Just rambling thoughts....

A week from today is Steve's speech at the WWDC where, we're all guessing, he'll be announcing the new MacPro (not "Mac pro"). I'm just hoping he'll say "Macintosh" at least once. :-)